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Category Archives: Essays

a little down on math as valuable

“We need an analytic expression to specify the exact relationship between the values of x and y. This relationship between the values of the independent variable (in this case x) and the dependent variable (in this case y) is called a function.”

What Can the Novel Don Quixote Teach Us About Reading Books?

This question is a good one because there is an obvious and easy answer to come to and to use as a starting place for further thoughtfulness: we are to learn from the fate (and some might call this fate unfortunate, but for me this remains to be determined one way or the other) [...]

forty four hundreds of words

about job.

the truth about astronomy the government doesn’t want you to know

I have just reaffirmed for myself the hell that is writing a paper. it’s really just the hell that is honest inquiry. writing down the honest inquiry just makes it more apparent. it’s so difficult to be scrupulous, rigorous, and honest. it’s about whether heaven is eternal and changeless and therefore alien [...]

it’s done

i feel like i’ve committed murder.

My scattered essay is improved

It contains the few paragraphs I wrote about Lavoisier. Now they are in context? A context, anyway. I welcome criticism and will try to be humble.

ways of understanding as a way of knowing

To explain why “the separation of particles by heat is a constant and general law of nature”, Lavoisier suggests the following:
It is difficult to comprehend these phenomena, without admitting them as the effects of a real and material substance, or a very subtile fluid, which, insinuating itself between the particles of bodies, separates them from [...]

Meditations thoughts

Robert Hass’ Meditations at Lagunitas is just that: the verbalization of the narrator’s meditation. He speaks partly to us, but more the narration is more [sic] so an inward train of thought. The speaker begins by introducing the general idea that ‘all of the new thinking is about loss’ and then goes [...]

St John’s Application Essay #3

3. Select some experience from which you have derived exceptional benefit and describe it, explaining its value to you.

St John’s application essay #2

St John’s application essay #2
2. (a) Describe your reading habits and your experience with books.
(b) Choose some book that has been important in shaping your thoughts and discuss a single aspect of it (not the book as a whole) that is particularly significant to you.

St John’s application essay #1

1. Explain in detail why you wish to attend St. John’s College; please evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your formal education to date.

Protected: Alan’s ToK Essay

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Protected: ToK External Assessment

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