Prompt Frustration

I've written one of my essay prompts for the UC system, but the other is still pending... instead of writing a real response for the second essay, this is the only thing I've come up with so far, and I'd be an idiot to send it in.

Describe the world you come from — for example, your family, community or school — and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations.

Aren't sweaty essays just awful? 

This topic is incredibly stupid. You couldn't sound worse when asking about our surroundings and backgrounds than calling it "the world [we] come from". Aren't we all from the same world? You make it sound like we are all floating around on our own planets, watching each other apathetically across the expanding void. 

And why would you ask about our "dreams and aspirations"? You're just bound to receive all kinds of sappy and affected essays from kids who really don't know what their plans are but feel they need to say they have them. Honestly, don't the admissions readers suffer enough? Are you trying to heighten suicide rates this quarter (or semester, as the case may be)? I don't think you want to know about the kid who wants to "heighten his already acute sense of interpersonal skills in order to reform ineffective world systems" or the psychology major who's "just so ready to go to the school and learn and help people!" or the idiot who tries to analyze the prompt and write something clever, ultimately off topic, and dangerous enough to piss a lot of people off. 

After all, the UC system is a big deal. If you have that much power, who wants to be told that their essay prompts suck? Who would even send an essay like that? They'd be screaming, "don't accept me to any of your schools!" The officers would be annoyed and say, "this tells us nothing about his background and is completely off topic". But seriously, personal statement prompts are the worst. They're always doomed too fail. Goofy prompts like "tell us about the relationship between you and your arch-nemesis" beget goofy essays. And if you want some on-track, good essays (along with a dumpster-load of terrible ones); you write a prompt like the one I'm not following. And-- well, I've never seen a good personal statement prompt before, but I'm guessing if one was written, the universe would explode and be replaced with something more complex.

I suppose, no matter the prompt, no one can really reveal themselves completely through an essay. So, from a certain perspective, it doesn't matter what prompt is written. The reciprocation will be flawed and often terrible, regardless. It is the applicant's job to make do, defy probability and write something good, instead of wasting everyone's time and disregarding his duty.

Deep Throat?

Yes, mistrust is a "protective mechanism". I like this description-- it connotes the sort of automatic response that mistrust is. It is mechanized, automatic. And although it protects us and can help us, like all machines, it will malfunction.
Too much mistrust eats away at us, makes our cogs rust and corrode, and ends up hurting us more than it would have helped. We can get caught, and feel the infinite pain from a disappointed brother or mother; or we can strain under the heaviness of mistrust, the inability to relax and just trust.
But mistrust isn't wholly bad. There is an accepted amount of cynicism (we know from our own actions that human beings cannot be completely trusted at all times). There are reasons to mistrust-- it is that protective mechanism, an assurance against harm.
But can we trust ourselves even? If we trust no one else, don't we fail as well? Trust is something that we dispense carefully and sparingly. We need to find more occasion to trust in the things that immediately require it-- relationships, the workplace, the school system--, and to change those institutions which we cannot trust (government).
However, I don't think we will ever reach the wanted level of trust. Humans cannot all collectively decide to trust in themselves with such a predisposition to mistrust. It is instead an individual decision, made with individual discretion, to trust.




There is a certain attraction to those characters who trust no one. Whether it is the lone ranger with a hood over his oily hair, sitting alone, in the corner of a bar; or the government agent who works in the x-files department; we enjoy these characters...
But they each have those they trusted: Mulder has Scully, and Strider has Gandalf.