Potatoes are beautiful. Even after eating them two meals a day for a week straight, you simply don’t get tired of them. We certainly thought we would when we were told that potato was the staple food in the village we were visiting, but we were wrong. Steamy hot potatoes are a welcome sight and scent after a hard day’s work, and they are, surprisingly enough, the perfect recipe for developing incredible friendships with a wide range of...

Waldo is in the middle of nowhere. More specifically, the village of Waldo is in Waldo Township, Marion County, Ohio, the United States of America, Earth, the Solar System, the Milky Way, the Universe. It’s very small, not even large enough to be called a town, making it nearly impossible to find on a map. In Waldo, there’s little to see and even less to do. For all intents and purposes, Waldo is lifeless. That is, until you...

I actually enjoy being a zombie. Not, of course, that I’m a zombie all the time, although I proudly present myself as one at various intervals throughout the school year. My transformation from a Homo sapiens to a stumbling, incoherent humanoid is a gruesome overnight phenomenon caused by my ardent passion for AP and honors classes. I find it exhilarating to register for as many challenging classes as I can, struggle with the homework load and late nights, and...

Everything about Middle Earth is awe-inspiring. I first realized this after my dad finished reading The Hobbit to me when I was 11. Intrigued, I devoured The Lord of the Rings series in three weeks, watched each of the films in quick succession, and was firmly hooked by J.R.R. Tolkien’s intricate histories, characters, and languages. Since then, I have read every Tolkien-related book I could find, travelled to New Zealand to visit the Lord of the Rings movie...

When I first applied to UChicago under early action, I was deferred because my "Why UChicago" essay wasn't specific enough to the university. While I'd had a lot of fun writing about why being a zombie made me perfect for a rigorous university, if I could go back, I'd write about why the university's English program appealed to me, why I liked the unique activities at the...