Ross Kelly

      Prompt #2: Tell us about a talent, experience, contribution or personal quality you will bring to the school.

      You are dreaming. I had been repeating the words to myself as I drifted off to sleep in my bed. The repetitive sentence marqueed in the darkness behind closed eyes. The letters expanded then burst. All meaning lost, the remains desperately funneled through an infinite void of voices, seeking my own. The absurd logic of my subconscious was taking over. Upon closer inspection, I was now standing a few feet from my bed, where in another world, I was fast asleep. A disorienting tug pulled on my body. Darkness clouded my vision; the room was quickly spiraling away from my view.
      I recalled the instructions I had been reading earlier that day. I drew all my focus toward creating a new scene. It started to fill my vision with a tremendous light. A giant field of golden grass, rippling from the wind, wrapped around my body with marvelous force. A lone tree dotted the field. My own thoughts resonated through the world as I took my first step forward. So this is my mind.
      The excitement from my first lucid dream carried on through my mundane day in high school. Every thought plagued a yearning to return to my dreams. Would there be any limits to the worlds I could create? My mind was riddled with the experience I had faced in the early morning. How could I be conscious in a purely subconscious creation? How could my mind create such real and detailed experience when I have a hard time picturing my own face? What makes an experience real? What does the absurd logic of dreams say about the nature of humanity? How can the human mind not understand its own genius? I knew these questions would stay with me for life.
      Though I do not often find myself awake in the marvel in the mind of my own sleep, I still recognize the insight on experience it has lent me. I realize that consciousness and experience make up all we know, and that we can only guess as to why we are here and how the universe works in its entirety. I also know that I will not be able to fully enjoy life unless I am able to learn as much as I can about how and why we are here. This entails learning what makes our lives significant and above all, meaningful. I am thirsty to learn all about the nature of our world by immersing myself in a little of all fields of research from physics and chemistry to literature and philosophy. I am set on building a broad picture of the world in my mind. I am curious and seceptible to all of humanity’s questions. I will be carrying an urge to learn all my life, or at least until I know all that humanity has to offer.