The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

I understand that with thousands, possibly more so, of college applications sent to the University of Pittsburgh every year, it is difficult to choose its new students. Who should the school decide upon to enter its doors next fall? Out of every quality a student could offer, a school should search for someone who is intelligent, responsible, and diverse. Possessing these traits, I believe Pittsburgh University should choose me.

A trait associated with worthwhile students is intelligence, since learning required skills for a future career is the entire point of going to college. Throughout my years at U High School, I have taken advanced and difficult classes, such as Honors English, College Algebra, College Trigonometry, and AP Euro. I have managed to receive excellent grades, consisting of As and high Bs in every one. Also, in the college mathematical and computer classes I have taken already and will take the second semester of my senior year, I have attained/will attain credits of university level. Finally, I scored advanced on the PSSA’s of my junior year and will likely do similarly well on the SAT’s in a couple months. I have learned through taking these classes that only through studying nonstop and pushing past any mental difficulty can I achieve my goals in life, such as becoming a pharmacist since it will require at least seven more years of schooling after my senior year.

Another quality schools desire in their student body is a sense of responsibility, which I have proven to have since my elementary school years and especially now. Ever since I was in fifth grade, I have taken care of my home—cleaning, washing clothes and dishes, etc.—thanks to the difficulties my father put my mother, brother, and me through, including kicking us out of our house in third grade. While my mother studied for her nursing degree and later worked on TCU and ICU, I made sure our residence remained sanitary. Plus, since the summer of my sophomore year, I have spent my either Thursday or Saturday evenings each week at the Uniontown Hospital for the Senior Project and have continued to volunteer there even after I achieved my required hundred hours. My duties as a volunteer, or candy striper, include feeding patients, making forms, and even helping nurses put DVT boots on the bedridden invalids. Finally, I have kept up a full-time job at Walgreens as a service clerk, my job comprising of working the register, stocking, and cleaning. Since my senior year began, I have managed to juggle my AP classes and work without losing favor in either my teachers or my managers. This asset has proven to be a very significant skill in my life, because if I had slacked in any of my duties, my family would have lived in filthy conditions, I would not pass high school, and I would have lost my job.

The third characteristic I can offer Pittsburgh University is my hard-earned sense of well roundedness, which is the foundation upon which my intelligence and responsibility grew on. As I hinted before, my childhood consisted of the difficulties and grief my father put my family through. My mother, brother, and I often had to move to other neighborhoods and schools, which continually put me in a different educational environment where I learned to adapt with the constant change. In addition, I developed a healthy respect for older individuals who displayed a set of qualities my dad did not possess, such as a hunger for knowledge and a desire to be useful. Lastly, the abuse and neglect my family and I suffered through has given me an elevated sense of respect for those benefiting our society, including public school teachers and college professors. The experiences I went through as a kid led to my conversion into a responsible, smart, respectful, and adaptable young adult.

The University of Pittsburgh simply requires an asset like me. It needs responsible, diverse, and intelligent individuals that hold the key to our country’s future. Those students will become the next generation of nurses, doctors, teachers, engineers, scientists, and every other type of worker who takes care of the most crucial jobs our people depend on. As another summer passes and autumn returns in 2009, I hope the University of Pittsburgh chooses me.

My good Uncle Sam found out half a year ago that his cousin, Anne, was killed during the Holocaust in the 1940’s. For a while, I tried to comfort him, as he’d never known what became of her, but he had drawn away, staying entire nights in his underground laboratory. He shoved stem-cell research and cancer cure projects aside for something I didn’t know about until this morning: time travel. After taking a quick trip to Greece to get Socrates’s autograph, I joined in his plans to stop the Nazis and Hitler by journeying back to the time of the Reformation in Germany, where anti-Semitism found its roots. I shall undo the chaos by stopping the publication of “On the Jews and Their Lies”, preach against xenophobia, and try to solve the money-lending dilemma.

When the time machine reaches the year 1519, I’ll begin my quest by ending the distribution of the treatise, “On the Jews and Their Lies”, before it starts. This partially led to Hitler’s hatred of Jews, with passages containing messages such as, “First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them...” and “Over and above that we let them get rich on our sweat and blood, while we remain poor and they such the marrow from our bones”. During the year 1519, Martin Luther was still sympathetic toward the Jews, defending their status in society and arguing with theologians that they would never covert to Christianity, as the Catholic Church had persecuted them too much. I will try to persuade Luther to keep to this opinion even after Protestantism gains footing in Germany and those obeying the Judaism faith continue to refuse to become Christians. I will remind him of the kind works Jesus displayed towards everyone, even accepting a criminal into His kingdom on the day of His crucifixion. In this way, Luther will continue to write books such as “Servitus Judaeorum” and “Magnificat”, which defend the Jews’ existence in medieval Europe.

Next, I will try to lessen the rate of xenophobia plaguing the German citizens by publishing a book called, “Die Ausländer annehmen” (Accept the Foreigners). As anyone can understand by simply glimpsing through a history book, the native majority of a country tends to harass and shun the alien minorities. Hitler slaughtered millions of people who didn’t fit the status quo: homosexuals, mentally retarded individuals, gypsies, and, of course, Jews. During the Reformation in Europe, where the Black Plague had wiped out a third of its population, German citizens feared that foreigners would spread the disease once again. Some simply rebuffed them for being different and odd, while others went so far as to believe even legal Jewish citizens had joined allegiances with the Islamic enemies of the Christians, including the Ottoman Turks. My book would distinguish between facts and myths concerning the Jews, as well as other groups of people often abused by the majority, to halt any lingering bits of discrimination that would’ve eventually reached the twentieth century and led to the Holocaust.

Finally, I would convince the German princes to eradicate the laws forbidding Christians to go into the business of money lending. During the Reformation, Christians couldn’t take part in this industry because the law stated that Christians couldn’t lend money out of interest. However, kings and other powerful, political types often needed to borrow money, so Jews became moneylenders. Despite the fact that most of the time, rulers refused to repay the Jews and went to the point of expelling them from one’s country, this job led Christians and other people to think that they were a greedy, stingy group. This stereotype continued to Hitler’s day, causing him and others to believe they were responsible for the economic depression following Word War One. When I travel back to that year and incorporate laws allowing Christians to enter the money lending business, that cliché will no longer exist.

After my uncle manages to fix up a couple glitches in the programming, we’ll spend the next year (or no time at all in the present, if we get this time travel thing down) influencing and directly affecting the events occurring centuries before in Germany during the Reformation. Our efforts will hopefully cause the Holocaust to fade away from history, save the lives of six million Jews as well as others, and have Hitler remain a disgruntled veteran, rather than become a country’s dictator.

There was a Lover for hire from the street,

Covered with yellowed skin from head to feet,

Possessing a lassitude, distant gaze,

Her unkempt hair not brushed in many days,

How she got her palfrey, black with white breast,

I could only ponder and simply guess,

As her own clothes, once a beautiful blue,

Had long since turned a muddy brown hue.

Though I suspected her of many lies,

Her stories of Morgana in wars’ skies,

Of wise Dagda’s hammer and love of feasts,

Of Turreon’s protection of the beasts,

Stories that had disappeared underground,

When we praised the One with His thorny crown,

I gave the girl all of my attention,

Her great tales keeping me in suspension.

Asking Lilith why she came, she told me,

“The rich men there despise celibacy.”



Yeah, we have to make a new character for The Canterbury Tales and my Word document is PMSing again. So... Here's it's temporary home. Enjoy before I turn this in, peeps.

COMMENTS

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Joli
04:44 Sep 16 2008

Well done!

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