Hi, would really appreciate your help in reviewing my essay please!
#1 Stanford students are widely known to possess a sense of intellectual vitality. Tell us about an idea or an experience you have had that you find intellectually engaging.
Having completed Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveller's Wife, the idea of time travel has yet again fascinated me greatly. Apart from Einstein's Relativity Theory and wormholes, the implications of time travel are also very intriguing.
Can one go back in time to kill one's grandfather? Novikov's self-consistency principle says 'no' by postulating that events that would create paradoxes just will not occur (barring parallel timelines). The universe simply prevents it from happening and ensures that causality is maintained. This principle is apparent in Niffenegger's novel, where the protagonists' lives were so complexly intertwined due to Henry's time travelling. Nothing the characters did could prevent them from meeting, falling in love, and Henry from dying, even though they knew when and how, and even saw it happen.
Being subject to this deterministic world is both a depressing and exciting thought. Ignoring his inability to control his time travelling, Henry's ability brought a certainty to his life, a kind of wealth in the currency of knowledge. Initially, I envied him. This power is something I know I crave, as uncertainty about my future has been the source of much angst for me. I hate waiting, wishing, wondering about what my future holds for me.
But I don't know if I can deal with the futility that comes attached with this forbidden fruit - the knowledge of both good and evil in my future. If I feel powerless not knowing, wouldn't I feel even more so if I could read the script of my life, but not be able to change it? I mulled over this, wondering which was the lesser of two evils. In the end, I couldn't decide. But I reflected that since the present is all I have, the present is what I will treasure and live to the fullest, whether it made a difference or not.
Having completed Audrey Niffenegger's
Having read sounds better :P
If I feel powerless not knowing, wouldn't I feel even more so if I could read the script of my life, but not be able to change it?
Niice..
Wow Isaac, this is intellectually engaging.. you have picked the right topic and discussed it really well.. and I like how you end it by convincing yourself and the reader that knowing might make you feel worse than not knowing..
Just improve your wording, otherwise I find your ideas great!!
