Death by Highlighter :: Graduate College Admissions Essays

demise by Highlighter   I woke up Tuesday good morning with a strange sense that I was not alone in bed. Something was jabbing me in the left hip. I opened one nerve tentatively. It was 847 a.m., and I did not want to be awake. I investigated the source of the jabbing feeling to discover, to my horror, a florescent yellow, uncapped highlighter that I had permit slip after falling asleep while reading a report on science and engineering at Duke. I shuddered, go the higlighter to a more innocuous location on the floor, and went back to sleep.   The perils of highlighters, however, prevail well beyond my now- fluorescent fixture-yellow sheets, nightgown and left hip. Having highlighted my way through tercet years of college, four years of high school and a fewer years of junior high, I countenance reached the shocking conclusion that highlighters book undermined my education.   Before the days of transparent yellow markers, readers took notes on reading, or wrote in ball-point pen in the margins, forcing themselves to transmit breeding from words on a page to uniform thought to at least somewhat retentive squiggles on the page. The highlighter offers a seductive shortcut--the reader can bypass the reproducible thought to squiggle step of the process and simply smear evoke passages with fluorescent ink, no analysis required. Particularly impressive phrases may deservingnessoriousness an emphatic mark in the margin, and, on rare occasions, the holder of the fluorescent wand may even add a note in blue or black ink.   Regardless, however, the marker-wielding reader generally smears large tracts of school textual matter with ink, never bothering to summarize or paraphrase teaching.   I know the thoroughfareologic symptoms of highlighter-addiction because I am a victim. I shouldnt have turned away this way--I had a strictly traditional fifth-grade history teacher who required us to take notes on our reading in discoverline form. But something happened in high school, I think in European History, when I realised I could never write down every iota of information in our menacingly dense text book--so I grabbed hold of a highlighter and started marking enkindle facts in bright yellow. I meant to make notes in the margins, but there wasnt time . . . and so I launched myself down the highlighter agency to mental oblivion.   Highlighters should shoulder at least as much of the goddamned as MTV for Generation Xs short attention span and anti-intellectual leanings.Death by Highlighter Graduate College Admissions Essays Death by Highlighter   I woke up Tuesday morning with a strange sense that I was not alone in bed. Something was jabbing me in the left hip. I opened one plaza tentatively. It was 847 a.m., and I did not want to be awake. I investigated the source of the jabbing feeling to discover, to my horror, a florescent yellow, uncapped highlighter that I had permit slip after falling as leep while reading a report on science and engineering at Duke. I shuddered, travel the higlighter to a more innocuous location on the floor, and went back to sleep.   The perils of highlighters, however, pass along well beyond my now-fluorescent-yellow sheets, nightgown and left hip. Having highlighted my way through trey years of college, four years of high school and a few years of junior high, I have reached the shocking conclusion that highlighters have undermined my education.   Before the days of transparent yellow markers, readers took notes on reading, or wrote in ball-point pen in the margins, forcing themselves to transmit information from words on a page to crystalline thought to at least somewhat coherent squiggles on the page. The highlighter offers a seductive shortcut--the reader can bypass the coherent thought to squiggle step of the process and simply smear interesting passages with fluorescent ink, no analysis required. Particularly impressive phrases m ay merit an emphatic mark in the margin, and, on rare occasions, the holder of the fluorescent wand may even add a note in blue or black ink.   Regardless, however, the marker-wielding reader generally smears large tracts of text with ink, never bothering to summarize or paraphrase information.   I know the ghoulish symptoms of highlighter-addiction because I am a victim. I shouldnt have turned out this way--I had a strictly traditional fifth-grade history teacher who required us to take notes on our reading in outline form. But something happened in high school, I think in European History, when I realize I could never write down every iota of information in our menacingly dense text book--so I grabbed hold of a highlighter and started marking interesting facts in bright yellow. I meant to make notes in the margins, but there wasnt time . . . and so I launched myself down the highlighter path to mental oblivion.   Highlighters should shoulder at least as much of the doom as MTV for Generation Xs short attention span and anti-intellectual leanings.