University of Chicago Admissions Essay

At the beginning of last year as an introductory essay prompt, we were each given one of the most obscure college application prompts my teacher, Mrs. Mueller, could find. This was mine:

Modern improvisational comedy had its start with The Compass Players, a group of University of Chicago students, who later formed the Second City comedy troupe. Here is a chance to play along. Improvise a story, essay, or script that meets all of the following requirements:

• It must include the line, "And yes I said yes I will Yes." (Ulysses, by James Joyce)
• Its characters may not have super powers.
• Your work has to mention the University of Chicago, but please, no accounts of a high school student applying to the University -- this is fiction, not autobiography.
• Your work must contain at least four of the following elements: a paper airplane, a transformation, a shoe, the invisible hand, two doors, pointillism, a fanciful explanation of the Pythagorean Theorem, a ventriloquist or ventriloquism, the Periodic Table of the Elements, the concept of jeong, number two pencils.

[University of Chicago]

And here is my essay.

You walk into the classroom on this seemingly lackluster winter day. The sky is bleak and dreary, much like the faces of your fellow students as you all file in for this 10:00 torture session. As you all find your seats, you pull out your copies of Ulysses, by James Joyce, that you were supposed to have read by today. Did you finish it? No, you were too busy staring at a Periodic Table for your 2:00 class, Organic Chemistry, which you still probably aren’t prepared for. The sleep-deprived zombie of a student sitting next to you didn’t finish it either; she was preoccupied reading a chapter on pointillism for Art History.

Everyone around you seems lifeless; no one wants to be here. In a minute or two, the professor walks in and sets his briefcase onto his desk. “I take it you have all read the Joyce novel I assigned a few weeks ago.” Not a sound escapes the mouths of the hundred or so students vacantly staring at him. He despises the lack of response from his pupils, but the proud graduate of the University of Chicago hasn’t become tenured yet, so he can’t yell at you too fiercely without risk of losing his job. So he bites his tongue, and looks down at his roster.

“Miss Schmidt, what did you think of the last line of the novel?” Pointillism girl rustles through the pages in her book, and drops it on the floor. The professor rolls his eyes and looks back to his roster. “Mr. Pierce, what about you?”

“‘And yes I said yes I will Yes’ seems like an odd ending to such an emotional monologue, let alone such a strange book. But maybe that’s what Joyce wanted,” says Oliver Pierce. Oliver Pierce, an English major, is the only one who doesn’t seem to hate his very existence in this moment. His beaming, beautiful smile lights up the otherwise gloomy atmosphere.

“Yes, very good, Mr. Pierce. . .” said the professor. He continues on, but you can’t bring your attention from Oliver, and his idiosyncratic way of putting his Ticonderoga No. 2 pencil behind his left ear. You know it’s just for the look because he has another sitting right on his desk, but, somehow, that makes it all the more endearing. You contemplate compiling all of your heart’s desires on a page of Ulysses, ripping it out, folding it into a paper airplane, and throwing it across the room, directly onto his desk. But will you? No, you can hardly look at him without overanalyzing it, and finding thirty things you’ve done wrong. You’ll go back to your dorm, think of him even more, but you will never take any action.

You glance at the clock that reads 10:57, and your mind is suddenly aware of your surroundings once again. The professor is talking about your assignment and what you will do next time you meet. You start to worry about Organic Chemistry again, and the professor dismisses the class.