Wrote this for early admission but didn't apply. Wondering if I should keep this.
_____________________________________________________________________
Have you ever heard of genocide with bad spaghetti?
That's exactly what the code of my first game 'Particles' was capable of. It was convoluted, tangled and ugly, just like bad spaghetti. It also committed genocide against every principle of coding propriety written in stone.
To the despair of all the programming perfectionists out there though, it ran perfectly. My game did all it intended to. The controls, the effects, the execution showed no sign of error. Yet every look at the underlying code shortened two years of my life and every run caused a programming god somewhere to plan an apocalypse.
There I was, conflicted as ever, and pondering over the age old question: Do the ends justify the means?
My conscience disagreed and as the ghost of Machiavelli sighed in disappointment, I pressed delete on my keyboard, thereby bidding adieu to three months of hard work.
I wasn't content to just patch things up. Fixing this monstrosity meant starting from square one. I was determined not to have an asterisk on this personal first, this milestone which stated how shoddy my effort was.
Two months later, Particles was resurrected. There was no more bad spaghetti. The ends may not always justify the means but it certainly helps to justify the means with the end. My means, the total effort of five months I spent learning and relearning game development were definitely vindicated by the end result; a clean piece of software I could be proud to call my own.
Rayan, I still remember this essay vividly from when you first posted it. I found it quite appealing and humorous at that time, something that I still feel to this very day, having read the essay once again. Why are you thinking of trashing this essay? I really wish that you would keep it. It has the potential to answer a number of prompts such as:
1. An obstacle you had to overcome
2. Describe an accomplishment that you are proud of (with edits and revisions)
3. A background or personal experience
Of course all of the aforementioned prompts require you to adjust your essay to better suit the prompts. Personally, I would keep this essay for future use / reference. It is always best to keep your old essay on file as you never know when you it might come in handy. Of course if you want to really delete the file, then you cannot be stopped from doing so :-)
bamabhai, let me give you some advise..
That'sTHAT WAS exactly what the code of my first game 'Particles' was capable of.
My game did allAND it intended to. The controls, the effects, AND the execution showed no sign of error. Yet (NEED A COMMA HERE)
every look at the underlying code shortened two years of my life and every run caused a programming god somewhere to plan an apocalypse.
every time I looked at the underlying code, it shortened two years of my life. Also, every time it ran, it caused a programming god somewhere to plan an apocalypse.
... I pressed delete BUTTON on my keyboard, thereby bidding ...
I wasn't WAS NOT content to just patch things up.
The ends may not always justify the means (NEED A COMMA HERE) but it certainly helps to ...
Rayan, I believe this essay is written rather quiet well, I don't think that you should throw this essay in the pit hole.
I say this essay is very creative, full of humor and actually well very well be accepted as answers to the prompts for Stanford.
Just like how you put it, it's an intellectual vitality,the essay is what it say it is.
I have no doubt that you will be able to write more meaningful and good essay but don't throw this one out.
A lot of students are not able to write anything at all, so help them by keeping this essay and trying it out with Stanford.
For future reference, keep a good full paragraph and not segmented ones, it looks more professional when you have full paragraphs in the essay.
Thank you for the critique all. I did post this before but then removed it after deciding I wouldn't be applying for early.
A lot of my friends told me this essay was rather average so I was apprehensive about it. Being an international, Stanford is need aware for me and I need a perfect essay since only a couple of students are taken from my country.
I might just decide to keep it if I'm unable to come up with something better.
Thank you andy_gowa for proofreading it and suggesting grammatical improvements.
