College App Essay Part ZOMBIE.

Recently, at the behest of several friends of mine I started reading yet another series of graphic novels. This one is about zombies. I used to snobbishly avoid graphic novels, deeming them inferior to "real" books. I liked to say that graphic novels were for those who had never grown out of picture books. Now I cannot get enough of them and laud their ability to tell stories in a way that no other medium can quite replicate. The series I just started, "The Walking Dead", chronicles a man trying to keep his family together as zombies overrun the world. I cannot say the book has made a difference in my life (although I have had a few messed up dreams recently), but the series manages to ask pertinent, powerful questions amidst the blood and gore without coming off as pretentious...only curious.

What happens if the world crumbles and cannot be fixed? How do people live when those they love most are constantly in harm's way? To whom can we turn when our leaders, police forces and armies fall? What must we become when the only rulebook to a hell on earth is the one we write and rewrite as life continues to surprise and shock us as we tramp through the darkness, trying not to succumb to it?

"The Walking Dead" does not provide definitive answers to any of these questions. What I especially enjoy about this series is that it acknowledges the diversity amongst personalities. A preacher locks his congregation out of his church, denying them a safe-haven, so he can survive. A small band of young adults turn into cannibals out of "necessity" and explain their motives to their victims, almost looking fot understanding if not forgiveness. Murderers, rapists, and thieves: criminals of all kinds appear when the law disappears.

Then there are those few that give us hope. Our survivors might be ruthless at times, but they love and protect each other as best they can. They always try to do what is right, whatever right may be in their newly diseased world. Each individual is broken in his or her own way, but their fluid community offers a necessary sense of security and family they cannot find anywhere else.

The first two or three books of the series spend most of their time exploring how different personalities take shape when exposed to severe and extended trauma (in this case a zombie epidemic). There are those who become leaders out of necessity, those who lie to get what they need, those who sell themselves or their skills for protection, those who go a little crazy or break completely, and those who are so set in believing in a greater force, be it God or the government, that is going to save them that they become a hindrance to themselves and their friends.

The later books in the series focus are more situational in nature, Members of our group are constantly dying, but there is also new life, and new recruits, an underlying desire in everyone to pursue as conventional of a life as is possible, and a wariness (sometimes warranted and sometimes not) whenever meeting new people.

These books offer a glimpse at humanity purified by fire. In book twelve, a young boy leaves his dying father's side for a moment to lure away the zombies outside their door. Three zombies attack him and somehow he manages to kill them singlehandedly. He returns to his comatose father and tells him he has outgrown his Daddy and can take care of himself. Not five pages later, he is a child again and he begs his father to wake up because he cannot face the world alone.

It is these moments that make these books so powerful. I am not fond of gore, but I can look past it for watching the process of growing up expedited by circumstance, seeing how love and greed are equally powerful motivators for all kinds of people and learning, along with those in the book, that evil can be performed and experienced for both right and for wrong. The only thing that we can hope is to always be able to distinguish between the two.

An Educational Experience for Your Perusal

College Application Essay Numero Uno:

Upon initially reading this prompt I starting thinking about all the classes and teachers I have encountered in 15 years of school. I have had inspiring teachers and challenging classes along with teachers who made interesting subjects seem useless and classes that could not hide their frivolity if they tried. During the time I have spent away from school, though, I have learned an educational experience does not require either texts or lectures. As such, I would like to tell an illustrative story regarding something I recently learned that is simultaneously frustrating and beautiful.

My friend Caspian* and I agree that our friendship hinges on our conversations. We talk deeply about religion, politics, family, friends, love - anything is fair game. Generally speaking, there is no one with whom I am more candid.

One night, on the way home from a "Ninja Assassin" viewing, our conversation turned to religion. Neither Caspian nor I are religious, but I see the validity of religion when it brings personal peace and happiness and is not used as an excuse to hurt others. I love that some people can put their faith in the unknowable, and I like listening to people talk about what they believe and why. Caspian says that he adheres to a "to each his own" code as well, but religion is clearly a sore spot for him. He would prefer that the religious keep their religion to themselves.

We talked about religion for hours that night. Caspian expressed his disgust for the evangelical, to which I responded by asking how missioning is any different from arguing for the superiority of Star Wars. Although the ramifications are different, the sentiment is the same. When a person loves something they share it, and hating them for trying to spread something from which they derive profound meaning makes no sense. The advocated individual has no more need to become a Christian than they do a Star Wars fanboy, and preemptively deciding not to be convinced is silly.

Although I did not know it at the time, what I said affected Caspian. When I returned to Minnesota several months later I found out that he and a very religious girl had given a romantic relationship a shot. He had many times before told me that he would never date anyone religious, but told me that the conversation we had that night swayed him.

I consider this series of events a rewarding educational experience even though it is unconventional. The things that we learn outside of a classroom, through relationships and conversations tend to be more truthful and meaningful than anything gleaned from a text, no matter how classic, or anything said by a teacher, no matter how inspired. I learned definitively that people change and that simply through a conversation I can personally shape those changes.

The frustrating part of this experience was that when the relationship did not work Caspian blamed it singularly on the girl's religion and used that one experience as incontrovertible proof that his former stance had been correct. He is once again convinced that religion is nothing more than a tool of alienation.

I realized that people are wonderfully malleable, but they do not want to be, so whenever they have a chance to revoke a personal change, no matter how positive it may have been, they will do so. That is a tragedy. It takes so much willpower to change in the first place that I hate to see how easily we are willing to wipe away all of that hard work for nothing more than a hollow "I told you so" that probably will not even ring true in our own ears.

*Name change for the internet because I'm a good person like that.