Cover Letters - Notre Dame: Fill & Download for Free

Sure. I’m an atheist and I’ve seen Mass at St. Peter’s and at Notre Dame, before it burned.Whether you’re atheist or not, odds are pretty good you live in a society with theistic elements. If you wish to understand society, it’s helpful to understand the religions around you.And I have to say, visiting Notre Dame and the Vatican in the same week was quite…illuminating.The Vatican is a study in excess, in the absolute worst impulses of the human mind. Various Popes through history competed to see who could one-up the others, who could out-spend the others on the most decadent, lavish excesses you can possibly imagine.Popes putting their names in solid gold letters over new wings built with unimaginable wealth beyond the wildest dreams of avarice. Marble rooms with gold thrones. If there’s a way to spend money on opulence, these Popes did it, then covered it with gold.At Notre Dame, I was left with the impression that it was built by people who believed, I mean truly believed. Notre Dame is grand, to be sure, but I got the sense it was a grandiosity genuinely dedicated to the god they worshipped, not to the people who built it.

The college process was such a roller coaster for me, but I’m glad for the results!Info/ stats about me:I’m a Latinx woman, from Phoenix, AZ + First-gen, low income (FGLI)Mostly applied through QuestbridgeApplied for Civil EngineeringSAT: 1280 (didn’t really care about it)Subject tests: 550 for math 2 and physics (def hurt me) :(ACT: 32 (E:34, M:29, R:33, S:32)GPA: 3.86 UW, 4.75 W1 AP Class, Spanish Lang (5) (One only class offered at my HS)All honors classes expect for fitness & artAlso took AP Physics 1 (1), Lit (2)- (Yikes)Clubs/ Internships-FIRST Robotics- VP for two years (I lived at school basically)- Dean’s List Semi + LA Regional Finalists + AZ State Champs + FinalistsStudent Government- officer for 1 year- member for 3NHS: Close to 120 hours150 hours of internship: Mentoring kids with STEM, Sustainability Officer at the City of Phoenix (one of a kind internship)apart of a college access program called STEPHispanic Mother-Daughter Program through ASU since 7th gradeEssays:PS- struggles of my low income and immigrant family from LA to Phoenix and how that shaped my parents’ support for my love of STEMMy expedition through Alaska with STEPSafeties:ASU Honors (Accepted)NAU (Accepted)GCU (Accepted)UoA (Accepted)Targets:Franklin and Marshall ( Accepted)Union (Waitlisted)Reaches:USC- Rejected :( This was my last shot to go back to LA and highkey hurt.Caltech- RejectedRice- RejectedMIT- Waitlisted then RejectedSwarthmore- RejectedHarvey Mudd- ED-Rejected- Happened while skating and had to go cry in my car + was Valentine’s DayBowdoin- Waitlisted at Disneyland ( got on the Matterhorn right after) and went to their fly-in programBrown- Rejected- By far one of my favorite interviews!Columbia- RejectedPomona- RejectedScripps- Waitlisted and also went on their fly-in programStanford- RejectedLehigh- Accepted!Notre Dame- Waitlisted then Accepted!- wrote a continued letter of interestTufts- Accepted!I’m still not sure which school to go to :/. I enrolled at Tufts for May 1st but might switch over to ND if the fin aid is like Tufts. At the beginning of my reaches, I was so heartbroken then I wouldn’t get any acceptances. Now I feel like ND is really calling my name and proved I am T15 material! I learned that even though you have a dream, it might change into something unexpected! <3Update: I’ll be attending Notre Dame in the fall and the fin aid offer I got from ND is a couple thousand dollars better! I got offered two scholarships that pretty much cover almost everything and I’m glad to see my hard work paying off. :) Go Irish!

There is some evidence, but it is far from conclusive and there is no evidence to support the traditional story of the Trojan War as we all know it today. One thing we know for certain is that Troy was a real city that really existed at the time when the Trojan War is said to have taken place. We need to be very careful, though, about interpreting this piece of information. Lots of people point to the fact that Troy was a real ancient city that existed around the time the Trojan War is supposed to have happened as “proof” that the Trojan War really happened.This popular tactic, however, is a bit like pointing to Notre Dame cathedral in Paris as “proof” that Victor Hugo’s novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a work of actual history. Quite simply, Troy’s mere existence as a city does not prove that the most famous story associated with it is in any way historical. There is such a thing as historical fiction.ABOVE: The existence of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris does not prove the existence of Quasimodo, just like the existence of Troy as a real ancient city does not prove that the Trojan War as described in ancient Greek literary sources was a real historical event.You mention “many texts” as evidence of the Trojan War. We need to be very careful about those too, though. The Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, date to around the eighth century BC or thereabouts, but the Trojan War is supposed to have happened in the early twelfth century BC. That means that the Iliad and the Odyssey—the earliest surviving sources that describe the Trojan War—date to at least roughly 400 years after the events they purport to describe.The Homeric poems furthermore contain all kinds of obvious anachronisms characteristic of the time in which they were composed rather than the time period in which they are supposed to have been set. Homeric heroes, for instance, are described as being cremated, like Greeks of the eighth century BC, rather than buried as the Mycenaeans actually were.The world of the Homeric poems also contains many fictional elements; for instance, Iliad 22.145–56 describes Hektor taking his final stand against Achilleus near two springs that flow from the river Skamandros past the city of Troy, one of which flows steaming hot and the other icy cold. No evidence to support the existence of either of these springs has ever been uncovered. Because of these problems, which are plentiful throughout the Homeric poems, we simply cannot view them as accurate historical accounts of the Bronze Age. Even later Greek sources are of even less relevance.While it is true that Troy VIIb, which dates to around the same time when the Trojan War is said to have taken place, was destroyed by fire, there is no conclusive evidence that this was the result of a Greek invasion. It is possible it could have been the result of a Greek invasion, but we do not have any conclusive evidence. It is also worth noting that the Mycenaean palaces of mainland Greece were all burned around the same time as Troy VIIb, meaning that Troy VIIb and the Mycenaean palaces may have simply been destroyed by the same wave of invaders.ABOVE: The walls of the acropolis of Troy VIIABOVE: A portion of the walls of Troy VIIA letter known as the “Tawagalawa letter” written in Hittite by an unnamed Hittite king, who has commonly been identified as Ḫattušili III (ruled c. 1265 – c. 1240 BC) to an unnamed “king of the Ahhiyawa” (i.e. the Achaians, or the Mycenaean Greeks) dating to around 1250 BC or thereabouts makes reference to an earlier conflict between the Ahhiyawa and the city of Wilusa (i.e. Ilion, or Troy). It is easy for people to try to read this as some kind of “proof” of the historicity of the Trojan War, but we must remember several things:The wording in the letter is extremely vague and we should be very careful about trying to read anything into it based on our own twenty-first-century familiarity with the story of the Trojan War.All the letter says is that there was some kind of hostile incident. This does not in any way translate to mean that there was a ten-year-long siege of Troy by the Greek armies led by a real king Agamemnon to avenge the capture of Helen by Paris, the prince of Troy.The letter predates the destruction of Troy VIIb by at least several decades.I think it is reasonable to infer from Hittite records that the Mycenaeans often went on raiding expeditions along the coast of Asia Minor and they probably at least occasionally pillaged Trojan lands. It is perhaps possible that the Mycenaeans may have ultimately been responsible in some way or another for the burning of Troy VIIb. That is about all we can know, though, and even this is speculative.A major problem here is the question of whether or not what I have just described qualifies as a real “Trojan War.” Sure, at least some of the Mycenaeans may have been in martial conflict with the Trojans, but we have absolutely no evidence to support any of the most familiar parts of the Trojan War saga.We have no evidence for the historical existence of Agamemnon, Odysseus, Helen, Achilles, King Priam, Hektor, Patroklos, or the Trojan Horse. Indeed, we do not have any evidence of any of the events described in any of the Homeric epics other than the Mycenaeans having occasional conflicts with Troy and of Troy being burned by someone.Perhaps further evidence will eventually be uncovered that will increase our understanding of this subject and lead scholars to accept more of the stories associated with the Trojan War as historical, but, for now, this is all we have and all we can have. In the meantime, we should treasure the Homeric epics and other works of Greek literature about the Trojan War for their literary value, rather than pretending that they are really historical narratives of actual events.For further information on this subject, I have written a much more extensive article on my website on this subject, in which I cover the material addressed here, but also a bit more on the archaeology of the city of Troy and the dubious historical accuracy of the Homeric poems.(NOTE: This answer is adapted from this earlier answer I gave on Monday to the question “Was the Trojan War a real historical event? What archaeological evidence exists, if any?”)