Author: Jasmin IvankovicDated: 13^th February 2020
Submission to: Albert L. Walker Excellence in English Scholarship Committee
This is the scholarship foundation founded in the memory of long-time Iowa State English Professor and Dept. Chair, Albert L. Walker. He is a very accomplished writer and community leader who passed away in March 2019 at 73 years of age. I have submitted this written piece in response to their 500-word essay prompt in order to describe my relationship to literature. Although I spent roughly 25 minutes on this before making my submission, I have made several application updates in the course of a day. And although what I have published here has a few wording changes not reflected by the submitted essay, It remains exactly 500 words, and the overall message has not been altered in any way, shape, or form.
With Open Systems
To put into words what literature has given in return for the many hours I’ve spent alone beneath a reading lamp brings catharsis like no other. I made my way through a library, where many like myself found the dimly lit atmosphere a calling that no other place could match. If it wasn’t for Salinger when I was 17, I wouldn’t have gazed out the dock beneath a setting sun as it shone over Lake Constance and had Holden’s voice (how I imagined it) in my mind, reminding me that I would never live another day quite like that one. And if it wasn’t for Wallace when I was 19, I wouldn’t have found myself so painfully aware of my own addiction to the glowing rectangle constantly in my hand; I wouldn’t have asked myself: “what was the double-bind holding me in place?”and found something there answering like a higher calling, my education, a kind of God I have given myself away to. Heller revived himself for me when I was 20, and I found myself laughing more and more each satirical left turn. I said goodbye to Snowden. I knew Ore made it to Switzerland. And, in my heart, I believed that Yoyo would, too.
What was the point of my day away from the engineering classroom? Was I better off looking through the binary-deductive lens of a dead mathematician? Who would I rather eat lunch with?
I kept myself rotating from the cold scientific truths to the imagined realm of the story and back. I grew each year asking for a quixotic mind to guide me from the depths of linearity and, in the process, became adept to the ways of literature and dependent on the ways of engineering.

But, more importantly, I was never alone. Because structure gave me time to believe. And I broke free, only to find a different kind develop. I once stayed up all night just to reread Fahrenheit 451. Because I was running from something, the shadows were mooning, and deep down, I knew that’s where I’d find my answers. Because if I wasn’t living a story within a story, then where would I be? If I wasn’t trying for opening the window to the best time I could have on any given day, you’d find me following Nietzsche into the abyss, because I knew it was staring back at me. And, you can ask for One Hundred Years of Solitude, but you would have to find the magic, surreal space being subject to forces from outside the vacuum. And I’ve only made it through to the few who could see that there’s a life outside. Further, there is also a growing life inside yourself, but only if you water it and provide the sunlight. My first principle was change, and I saw this change through every nuance-inspiring question. I said to myself that “each new question” meant “I was blind before I found the Answers.” The books just led me out.