How does the University of Chicago, as you know it now, satisfy your desire for a particular kind

of learning, community, and future? Please address with some specificity your own wishes and
how they relate to UChicago.

(There is a video on the UChicago admissions Youtube page that made me start loving
UChicago 3 years ago called Sad Gargoyle Diary. It’s basically UChicago students narrating
how s gargoyle on campus is sad because its lonely and fearful of its life because of great metal
birds/planes and green death/moss. So this is like another diary entry except this time the
gargoyle, which is me, is sad that it can’t be a student at UChicago)

SAD GARGOYLE DIARY 2.0

Dear Humans of uchicago,

I, a noble gargoyle, is sad; the time has come for me to chronicle my heartache.

Unlike the fearsome beasts that alight on Cobb Gate, I do not ensconce stony-faced under
sunlight, but have spent my time clawing through shadowy trials of writing without thumbs and
high school, perched on an unremembered pediment on the campus of a certain University of
Chicago. Yet — associate me not with the unaspiring grotesques or chimeras, hunky punks, the
frogs with bat wings, or white men with scripts and harps! I have a dream, simultaneously a
sorrow — I wish to be a prospective gargoyle on this campus.

How my sorrows stem in envy! Every eventide I feel the strange fusion of cerebral satisfaction
and mental tension oozing up from humans bustling beneath me. Every morn I hear the
beginnings of human debate and discussion that seem to oscillate in volume and heat at
random.

These studious humans are akin to medieval soldiers on a battlefield: tireless, leaving no field
untouched, embracing potential clamor, sculpting their ever-changing perspectives in debates.
What glory lies within Albert Pick Hall under the instruction of Professor J. Brehm! I long for the
chance to sit at that roundtable, for I believe that the conveyance of my words in any discussion
rival my talent in spewing water. I yearn to hearken the words of professors, to seize upon the
words of all the same, to sharpen my mind (and talons).

My winged ambitions soar beyond simply onlooking —

Last summer this city embraced me, inviting me as an ambassador for the Stonekind (secondly
for China and Southeast Asia, welcoming me to its glass-risen offices, legal conference rooms,
and chambers of city hall. It was here, after many years of wondering from afar, that I was able
to cross the threshold and enter the campus of uchicago as a “student”. I had the honor to perch
within the Law School, enraptured in the presence of The Alison Siegler as she describes her
work to an undergraduate intern and myself. How I felt that rush of adrenaline and
overwhelming emotion, previously only obtained by stretching my arthritic wings!
Let me tell you this, humans: My stony skin gleamed when I found that the rhythm of your
school matched the rhythmic beating of my wings — slightly offbeat. The same wings tremble
as I ache to hold a pen and paper to submit uproarious Scavenger Hunt proposals, or offer my
insights on the comparability of latke and hamantash, or the necessity of Meidici goat cheese
pizza to positively healing a polarized political climate (very).

Curse the barriers that stand between us!

I see the students rushing past, balancing books and thin machines and dollar shakes from the
Reynolds after class, heading off to help the others you humans coexist with. I almost raise a
talon to follow. I feel a fierce want within me to volunteer and build relationships with your
dynamic and diverse neighborhood, to teach preschool humans intricacies of the world in
Woodlawn with Jumpstart, then head with my house to The Point to read more Yeats.

Compare me not to the stone spires atop a building, but render me a gentle soul, suited for the
tender home you provide. I know you will embrace the rather odd juxtaposition of a gothic
gargoyle in an avant-garde glass dome library, just as you forbid letter discrimination to your
name.

To dear humans, I implore — take me to further skies, enliven my stony wings, let my screech
to be heard!