Essay Question
27 Jul 2019Today’s prompt: “Rewrite your college application essay from today’s point of view, answering the last question: ‘Is there anything else we should know?’”
#4. Is there anything else we should know?
In question #1, you answered the prompt, “The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?” Back when you were first applying to college, you wrote about the time the transmission went out on your 1993 Kia Sephia, and your family couldn’t afford to fix it right away. Your parents’ work schedules didn’t allow for them to take you to and from school and your part time job. You bummed rides from friends and flipped burgers until you’d saved up enough money for the repairs. You think you said something about empathizing with families who were even less well off than yours, who couldn’t afford to buy their high school kids a car, however shitty that car might be.
Today, your obstacle is Cxaxukluth, spawn of Azathoth, a bubbling protoplasm of an Outer God. It filled your lungs with a blob of ooze. You learned that not all obstacles can be overcome.
Back in question #2, you responded to the topic, “Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?” At the time, you talked about the crisis of faith you had when your favorite uncle was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. How you wrestled with the classic “Why do bad things happen to good people?” question that has plagued philosophers for ages. You concluded by saying that you’d found some solace in your church, but that you were still occasionally riddled by doubt.
Today, your entire belief system has been upended. The benevolent god you still weren’t totally sure you believed in has now been replaced by a pantheon of monstrous beings who see humans as either pawns in an inscrutable plan to spread madness and evil, fodder for their endless hunger, or a stain to be blotted out.
Question #3 asked you, “Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you’ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one from your own design.” You wrote on life lessons learned while playing foosball, an essay waxing rhapsodic on the difficulty in learning when to play defense and when to shift to offense in life’s everyday battles.
Today, were you to write that essay all over again, it would have been on the topic, “The Outer Gods are here and we’re all going to DIE DIE DIE.”