College Essay

Nov 20, 2018
1
4
Hey guys, this is my college essay on what thought was an interesting topic to write on. Please read it and tell me what you think about it :)

Rectangles

Playing cards. How do people see them? Some look at them as a means to gamble, some others look at them as a means to astonish people, others look at them as a blank canvas ready to be painted, and a few other people, well, they just shuffle cards. I come under the last two categories, probably the last three.

How can playing cards act as a canvas? Designing playing cards is an actual job which, sadly, many people either don’t know about or don’t appreciate. A huge number of illustrators spend time and creativity into designing fifty two pieces of paper. I myself have designed a few decks and made a lot of friends through them. It’s interesting how small rectangular papers have broadened my view on art. It’s improved my creativity, even increased my list of contacts.

Now, shuffling cards doesn’t really sound like much. Again what many people don’t know yet is that there is a whole community out there which thrives on shuffling playing cards. Shuffling cards is an art in itself, and it’s called “Cardistry”. Cardistry is the art of shuffling cards in such a way that it looks like they have a mind of their own, kind of like puppeteering, or ventriloquism. Cardistry has given me yet another chance to build up my creativity. It’s not an easy thing to perform, or even practice for that matter. Cardistry needs a lot of dexterity and patience. The cards will be dropped a thousand times by the time you learn a move and perform it perfectly, but you need to pick them up and not give up and keep trying until you nail the move perfectly. So in a way, Cardistry has taught me patience, and most importantly, it has taught me that no matter how hard the situation may be, no matter how many times I fail, I must keep picking myself up and try until I succeed.

Last, and hopefully not the least, sleight of hand, also known as magic to the lay people. In a way, it’s a lot harder to perform than Cardistry. The reason for that is that in Cardistry, the spectator needs to see what’s going on, otherwise it’s just pointless. Sleight of hand on the other hand, every single move you do needs to be hidden. If the spectator gets even the slightest hint as to how you do the trick, he or she might not be that impressed, although sometimes there are a few people who appreciate the trick even though they’ve found out the secret behind it. Again sleight of hand has helped me boost my creativity and patience but not only that, it’s also shown me how easily the human mind can be tricked, which is something that has always fascinated me.

Whether learning all of this with playing cards will be useful in my future or not, the one important thing that a plain deck of cards has taught me is that even the smallest thing can either be a really underrated work of art, or it becomes a really beautiful and mesmerizing work of art.
 

Gabriel Z.

Elite Member
Apr 26, 2013
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Nice Essay!! As this community has taught me, it is always a good thing to get creative. Over the span of the last almost 6 years I have posted and read other peoples opinions on card magic. All the while practicing and maintaining my mental health diagnosis. I agree with you 100% that playing cards are to be shuffled. I believe that is what they are primarily meant for. A deck of cards comprises of 52 pieces of paper, depending on how you approach the deck things can either get scientific or artistic. It's totally up to the operator. When one performs a magic trick for lay audiences there is an almost automatic assumption that your job is to fool or create wonder. There are too many avenues to explore.. Like for me my main focus of cards is the Up The Ladder ... Everytime I sit down with a deck of cards I try and spend some time carefully executing these false cuts. And every time I just add another piece of muscle memory to the picture. Another variation if you will to the endless possible ways to handle the move at hand. At the end of the day you have to find what makes you happy!!!. Hope this tid bit was useful to you.:)
 
Aug 15, 2019
2
0
I think your essay is great and comprehensive, if I can use this word for that. When I was doing my essays for college, I was ordering them from other guys and girls, hah.
 
Jan 26, 2017
2,173
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23
Virginia
Hey man, this was awesome, but there area few things I would change. Firstly, I'd add a full introductory statement. Normally, we're told not to start with a single word or a question as you did here. Maybe make things a bit more concise. I don't think "cardistry" has to be capitalized unless at the start of a sentence. I'm assuming @DominusDolorum would've covered most of that in his peer edit.

THE MAIN THING though, is that you probably might not want to post it here, it'll probably show up on a plagiarism checker. In-fact, I'm not sure exactly how good of an idea it was to post it on an open forums page. Hopefully nothing bad happens but I would totally email the school(s) that you're applying to and ask them if it'll cause any trouble.
 

DominusDolorum

Elite Member
Jul 15, 2013
893
1,114
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Canada
Hey man, this was awesome, but there area few things I would change. Firstly, I'd add a full introductory statement. Normally, we're told not to start with a single word or a question as you did here. Maybe make things a bit more concise. I don't think "cardistry" has to be capitalized unless at the start of a sentence. I'm assuming @DominusDolorum would've covered most of that in his peer edit.

THE MAIN THING though, is that you probably might not want to post it here, it'll probably show up on a plagiarism checker. In-fact, I'm not sure exactly how good of an idea it was to post it on an open forums page. Hopefully nothing bad happens but I would totally email the school(s) that you're applying to and ask them if it'll cause any trouble.
I never ended up getting a response from this person :/ and I deleted the essay while doing a clean up of my laptop.

The plagiarism checker never dawned on me until this moment. That could have been a whooole mess...
 
Jan 26, 2017
2,173
1,338
23
Virginia
I never ended up getting a response from this person :/ and I deleted the essay while doing a clean up of my laptop.

The plagiarism checker never dawned on me until this moment. That could have been a whooole mess...
Yea it might be a real big issue already since he posted it here BEFORE he submitted it. I remember reading a story (no clue if it's true or not, but I'm willing to believe it is) about someone in college who was so excited to share the essay they wrote for their class that they went to some wiki or something and copied and pasted the whole thing in there (or somethings, I'm not 100% sure, I'm probably remembering it quite wrong) or essentially uploading their essay publicly and then the plagiarism checker caught it and they got in a ton of trouble.
 
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