OIG Hotline, please be apprised of the following feeback I provided to my older son regarding a graduate school essay prompt of "How will you enrich the learning community?"
This content is available within an email forwarded to your attention within lanemacwilliams@gmail.com at 9:17 AM this morning, October 15, 2024.
Most sincerely,
Lane MacWilliams
Hi xxxxxx,
Just to let you know, sweetheart, I am having trouble with my cell phone, so it is turned off at the current time. If you need to reach me, please email me. I will be endeavoring to check my email every couple of hours.
First, thank you for sharing this essay with me. I think you do an excellent job reflecting on your experiences at Pxxxxx -- and the import of the Socratic method is truly transformative.
Perhaps you could delve slightly further into the ways in which the Socratic method helps us to ask "How do we know?" "What are our assumptions?" "What if some of our long-held assumptions are untrue?" "How can we find the hidden truths?" It might be quite powerful to demonstrate the revelatory power of the Socratic method through your articulation of a few of the most powerful questions that can be asked in an educational setting.
With regard to your thesis, I would love to see you become a little more technical. I think you should feel free to demonstrate that your understanding of the issue of methane clathrates in the arctic is still fresh and still relevant, and that you are ready to reference this knowledge, when appropriate, in the educational environment.
Beyond this, I think the question is asking you how you are different from other students, because it is this diversity of experience and mindset that will enrich the educational community to the greatest degree.
Without attempting to guide you too directively, I would simply ask whether your experiences with your health have reinforced your desire to contribute to the well-being of the planet. Whether you know it or not, your pituitary illness was life-threatening -- and I believe you sensed this at the time regarding your pituitary and other health conditions. That's a transformative experience for anyone to go through. And even though you and I haven't had much of an opportunity to discuss this, I feel it's extremely important.
Further, I would encourage you to reflect to some degree about your thoughts regarding the freedom of mankind. Some of your experiences, about which I realize you cannot write specifically, have brought you into confrontation with totalitarian interests. Yet one of the foundations of freedom lies within a pristine natural environment. It resides within our successful stewardship of the planet. Remember the manner in which Nelson Mandela insisted on gardening, even when he was in prison for decades? Remember the manner in which he shared the vegetables he grew with his guards, thus befriending them? What are the ways in which tending the natural environment frees us from the unethical strictures imposed on us by an imperfect human society? What are the ways in which our communion with the natural world has the potential to "rescue" us from the improper limitations imposed on us by mankind? What are the ways in which our preservation of nature can, in turn, transform the wrongs of mankind?
You have unique insight into these tremendous questions, though I realize that your freedom to write about them with candor at this time may be circumscribed.
If so, reference literature to make your point. "Long Walk to Freedom" is only one example, but there are many others. What about the themes of restoration within the natural world within some science fiction or literary classics? Even "The Secret Garden" speaks of the ways in which tending to the land frees us from our limitations through healing and renewal, and thus transforms the outer world as well.
I feel you have deep insight here, and, selfishly, I want to hear it!
Of course, these are my own subjective perspectives, xxxxxx, but I feel that your connection to literature, and further, to these themes of mankind's freedom through stewardship, carries great wisdom.
I love you very dearly, cherished young man,
Mom
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