College Entrance Essay: Ivan A. Babich

A character development exercise in the voice of the obsessive-compulsive co-lead of our premium serialized epic urban fantasy technothriller. Are you Team Ivan?

This week we’re sharing one of the character development exercises written as background for the novel, this one from the point of view of our co-lead character, the obsessive-compulsive Ivan Babich. For more on this project overall, please see “This Year a Serial Takes Root.”

Photograph by TeroVesalainen from Bigstock

In 300 words, please tell us what you would expect to gain from your time at our institution, and what you would uniquely bring to it in exchange.

I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I was conspiring to institutionalize myself.

That’s just a little joke, but it is emblematic of the sort of thing I’m hoping to gain from my time at your institution. Seriousness of purpose.

For instance, I’m sitting here trying to puzzle out what it is you’re looking for in these little essays, when probably I’d be better advised just to attempt to tell you a little bit about myself, what I’m looking for from my college experience, and what I might bring to the table in exchange. I’ll try not to worry too much about trying to impress you.

I guess the most accurate way to describe myself would be a hacker. But please understand that I mean this in the most positive possible way! I know the word has bad connotations for many people, but its true meaning is actually something good. Quite simply, a hacker is someone who tries to take interesting objects or systems and make them do cool and unexpected things. Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs were hackers. So were Socrates and Jefferson and the first girl or guy to figure out how to start a fire.

So, I could tell you that I expect a top-notch education from your institution, that I expect to leave it as a good upstanding citizen, ready to make a positive impact on society, and those things might all be true. But when it comes right down to it, I’m stoked to drop into your system and start finding out what cool and unexpected things it can do.

And what can I bring your institution in return? Why, the fruits of my hacking labor. I’m all about open-source intelligence sharing, so when I unearth some awesome hack or exploit of your system, you will know about it. And that’s a promise.

Ivan A. Babich √