Liana Matute

Common Application College Essay

(Prompt 6: Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of
time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?)

In the still of the night, all I can think about is everything. Silent yet loud, what lingers on
my mind are the cosmos. The four-year-old light that stars leak. I wonder how the universe
remains both radiant and dark. I wonder who’s controlling it, why it’s there. I ponder on the
facticity of everything that is. While I’m down here, something’s up there. I am going through an
inevitable existential crisis. Again. I fantasize about “up there.” Everyone has their own “up
there.” At the moment, mine is eternity. Absence of time, movement, sound.
Then, I think about down here. All there is, is time, movement, and sound. War. Hatred.
Violence. Debt. Discrimination. Hunger. All created by us, and things only seem to be going
downhill. Money is our biggest problem, but we keep making it. 38 million bills a day, to be
exact. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. Fruit grows out of the ground, for
free, but we still have to pay for it. Sometimes I wonder who was the one who thought locking
someone in a room for years for committing a crime would promote discipline and not insanity.
And can someone tell me why it took us until 2015 to legalize gay marriage?
Our culture can be toxic, as in, our tolerance for inhumanity and monotony. We’ve been
brought upon this world and placed in a hamster wheel. We are the hamster, life is the wheel. All
we know is routine and pattern. We wake up, do work, go home, eat, sleep, repeat; we don’t live.
Yeah, there are some lively moments, but life’s too busy for anything more than a moment. We
follow the rules, the procedures. I, as an adolescent, with the desire to do things right and set
myself up for success, follow every rule, every manner, every construct, every form of thought,
everything we are taught by those who are older. How do those people know what’s good for
me? I am not an average kid, “average” doesn’t exist. Diversity is reality. They tell me to think
“outside of the box” but as my fingers reach for the edge of it, I’m “not quite right.” I trust them
anyway, whoever “they” is. I do what’s “right.” But I long to live, explore, learn, take advantage
of my what I am, my eyes, my ears, my ability to think, and feel.
 Although thinking about “down here” usually never results in anything other than
bottled-up emotions and frustration, it has emphasized the power of knowledge. I fell in love
with learning in Ms. Sutjiawan’s physics class in ninth grade. She taught me the importance of
asking “why.” Because Isaac Newton asked “why” the apple fell from the tree, he developed the
theory of gravity and laws of motion, eternally changing science. Her class embraced my mind,
and allowed me to think freely, without the slightest boundary. Instead of being ridiculed, my
curiosities and inquisitiveness were celebrated. When you learn ideas, concepts, facts—it’s up to
you to determine how to use it. When I discover, when I grasp, I undergo a drive, an energy that
motivates me. I want to do something with my knowledge, make something of it, give it to
someone else, create a change. I want to impact someone’s life, make someone actually think,
make them want to cause change, too. I want to be someone’s Ms. Sutjiawan. I am so tired of
living in my comfort zone, now is the time to use my knowledge, and reassemble this hamster
wheel. Living starts now. And while I may never see the cosmos, and the stars that leak of 4-
year-old light up close, I’m taking a trip to find my own “up there.”