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BACKSTORY: I saw this prompt for a college entrance essay in another blog, and being a college graduate with, throughout my life, a very cynical outlook on education, I took it upon myself to take the prompt and answer it in a more candid manner than I would or could when younger and actually trying to get into a college as a recent high school graduate.
PROMPT: Choose an issue of importance to you - the issue could be personal, school related, local, political, or international in scope - and write an essay in which you explain the significance of that issue to yourself, your family, your community, or your generation.
Let me be candid and be clear right from the start, and testify as to my understanding of the question before giving an answer: many people use the general cloud of "meaningfulness" words (in the above prompt, for instance, "importance" and "significance" are used in this manner) to signify a sort of flavor or "tag" on certain events, ideas, theories, problems, etc. I am not arrogant enough to assume that all these people when they say this mean the same thing.
What I know is that people do things. Significance to me, is in the doing. How one spends their life really signifies significance. How they talk, is something else. Maybe it is another kind of significance, but I am not prepared to argue one vs. the other or some amalgamation of the two in any way. So for instance, if someone says that population control is super important, I say, look at their life. Fourty hours a week working at Starbucks, 3.5 hours a week jacking off, $500 a year donated to whatever charity--equals what, in terms of what must be important to them? Obviously the calculus need go much further than that, but I hope you can figure out what I'm getting at here, so I can move on.
In summary, I'm a skeptic when it comes to "importance" or "significance." Let what people do, speak for itself. I'm sitting here typing this, pretending it is so I can impress you and get into college. Lofty "issues" are miles away from this project and it is a pretense to pretend any "issue" in the sense you must mean, "personal, school related, local, political, or international in scope" means fuckall to me.
Maybe it "feels" like it means more, and maybe in some of the games we play with speaking, "it does." For instance people will argue that what is important is what saves the most lives, or prolongs their life or certain people the most, or what makes people feel most compelled to act, or to cry "ought," or to cry. Maybe "it's important" to figure out which of these games yield "true results", or what that means. Whatever. But such a reality is not reflected in anything I do. I hereby take my own arbitrary stance on the meaning of "importance"--that it is the substance behind actions (and decisions, in the sense that they even exist).
The only issue at play for me is this very issue of "importance." Does "importance" exist, or is it just the shadow of actual being? For, we easily see what people do. Is "significance" then just like a shadow of what really happens and exists, following it along? People brush their teeth. Saying it's important for them to do it seems somehow, just tautological and meaningless. But this seems to be necessary from my conception of importance. Yet if we take other options for the idea, then "importance" becomes "ought yet naught", equally frivolous. Just think about it: whatever we're doing right, isn't seen as important, and whatever "needs attention" and "needs fixing" is important, in such a case. It's just about needs. Aren't the needs already met equally important? The concept becomes useless and we are reduced to figuring out which saves the most money, children, sperm, seconds of suffering pain at such and such a level, whatever. Or arguing over which is what we must save, increase, reduce, etc.
I believe I have explained the issue of meaning or "importance or significance", a personal "issue", to myself, which seems to be what you asked. If this fails to meet your expectations you have only yourself to blame for not writing better questions.
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Let'see... obvious grammatical issues, gratuitous swearing, "I know everything attitude."
Hmmm...
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On November 13 2007 13:34 zer0das wrote:
Let'see... obvious grammatical issues, gratuitous swearing, "I know everything attitude."
Hmmm...
Anything constructive to go on? You just trolling or what? Your post has a higher problem-per-capita rate afaict, and yet you expect me to overlook that and just assume/find out wtf ur talking about in my unfinished draft? right...
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I would, but the integral of my life comes to zero. HO SNAP.
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Wait, you used words like 'tautological' and 'amalgamation', yet started a paragraph with 'What I know is that people do things.' ? :D
Rofl. I bet you didn't write something similar for your college entrance. I really hope it's an unfinished draft, for your sake.
Oh, right, something constructive. You write in such a basic and crude way, simple thoughts put on paper, that when one comes across a word like 'meaningfulness', hilarity ensues. Especially if it's used in the manner you did.
As for the conveyed message... it's just a bunch of truisms and questionable opinions. Sorry, at least that's how I see it.
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The parodies keep rolling in. Keep 'em coming guys.
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8748 Posts
I don't know how to read this. You say in the backstory that you're writing in a more candid manner than you would if you were "actually trying to get into a college" so should I take into account that you're purposefully removing the prompt from its context or should I read it as though you're a high school senior who, for whatever reason, feels compelled to apply to college without doing what gives him the best chances of acceptance? If I'm reading it in the former sense, I don't understand why you've chosen this odd format and I have no idea what you’re saying. If in the latter, I think the text's strongest angle is that of a parody with the goal of laying bare the shortsighted enthusiasm of young students.
It reminds me of my studies of 19th century Russia when students were very enthusiastic about philosophy and principles. They were eager to right wrongs in Russia using European logic and philosophy. They'd take to a view and adhere to it with such extreme zeal that contemporaneous authors quickly incorporated the "outspoken student" as a flawed character type into their works*. Your text also uses philosophy and the language used makes me think something needs to be rectified. But there are too many elements contributing to the preposterousness of the piece: the stream of consciousness structure, the tone, the diction, the pseudo-philosophy and the topic. So parody fits.
We can tell the author of the response cares very much about the issue and I guess we'll take his word for it that he explained it to himself. So in fact he has strictly answered the question and yet he knows that he hasn't met the expectations of the admissions personnel. Whether he meant all the nonsense preceding the last paragraph is temporarily irrelevant as its main purpose was to simultaneously answer and not answer the question. But the implication of this final paragraph reveals an irony that ties the entirety of the piece together. He implies that if a question can be answered without meeting expectations, then it's a poorly formed question. But what is there to say about the responder to a question who knows the expectation and purposefully acts against it? I’d venture he is committing quite a vile act by choosing to unconstructively criticize when he could give a constructive answer. And as our author says that significance is in a person's acts, he has inadvertently revealed the unattractive person he is. Perfect.
*+ Show Spoiler +Best example I can think of off the top of my head is the complaint Burdovsky and his crew bring against Myshkin in Dostoevsky's The Idiot. But really these silly student types are all over the 19th century Russian literature.
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Thank you NoNy. I think you are both right and not right simultaneously and have opened simultaneously a can of whoopass and worms. I will elaborate on this further momentarily. Maybe tonight or tommorow, possibly sooner.
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Maybe It's because my native language is not English but that was the worst piece of writing ever.
I couldn't understand what you were really trying to say, why are you trying to sound like an intellectual is beyond me. Try to simplify stuff, most people who read college essays want a concise well argued easy to read paper.
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Well I certainly forgot all about this. Maybe I can respond bit by bit.
I don't know how to read this. You say in the backstory that you're writing in a more candid manner than you would if you were "actually trying to get into a college" so should I take into account that you're purposefully removing the prompt from its context or should I read it as though you're a high school senior who, for whatever reason, feels compelled to apply to college without doing what gives him the best chances of acceptance? If I'm reading it in the former sense, I don't understand why you've chosen this odd format and I have no idea what you’re saying. If in the latter, I think the text's strongest angle is that of a parody with the goal of laying bare the shortsighted enthusiasm of young students.
Aptly put. Should you read it as though I'm a high school senior who is applying to college without doing what gives him the best chances for acceptance OR should you read it as though it is written by someone who is answering the question but not applying to a college? I think you want me to assume that the author's intent should be the authority here, so the question is along the lines of, "How was it written?"
It's possible that I deviated from my original intent or inspiration described in the backstory. Let me just say that, I meant some disrespect to the whole process of answering a quasi-inspirational-lifestory prompt as though you were on a job interview. So the format I have chosen for this, is no more offensive than the format my content intends to take as its subject. I also remember how utterly in the dark I was when applying to college, enough to still relate to it and see it in others, and I certainly meant to take this as a muse for this parody. But "parody" here would take on a lot of connotations of expectations that I did not intend to or try to meet. I did not aim at what most people here will think of as a "parody"--more like, what they would call, "sarcasm" (wrongly so, but this is their language).
And in the end I did not end up saying very much. To me, questions like this, are utterly frustrating. Either they want to see how well children can lie, they are incredibly naive, or the question is just for appearances. Some initial thoughts. I hope to get back to the remainder of the posts at a later date.
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I don't see the point of this exercise you've set for yourself.
The prompt is pretty simple. Just talk about something that is important to you. This is a chance to show your passion, your values, and so on. Rather than do this, you seem to want to criticize the idea of "importance" itself. You raise a good point, as people do often betray their own values with their actions, but that seems beyond the scope of the prompt. Your essay comes across as cynical and arrogant - admittedly just the "feeling" I get from reading it. It comes across more so because it's not even a real attempt to get into the school.
If we judge what is meaningful to a person by how they behave, what would one think about you, given that you have written this essay? (I think this is Nony's point.) Do you believe in anything?
I'd compare your essay to masturbation, but I find masturbation to be very pleasant and life-affirming.
Just my honest opinion - no disrespect.
Nick / Inky
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United States22883 Posts
What is it that you do exactly?
Not to be rude but your writing is fairly poor, rough draft or not. Not only are some sentences poorly constructed but you use a lot of euphemisms to try and sound more impressive. I would hardly call the essay candid. Look, I'm a big literature person and I can do a thorough job reading most styles of modern English, even when it's fairly laborious, but I'm having such a difficult time getting through the writing that I can barely understand your logic.
Now, just to be rude, what the fuck is wrong with you?
The only issue at play for me is this very issue of "importance." Does "importance" exist, or is it just the shadow of actual being? For, we easily see what people do. Is "significance" then just like a shadow of what really happens and exists, following it along? People brush their teeth. Saying it's important for them to do it seems somehow, just tautological and meaningless.
I agree that the essay question invites stupid answers and I think most admissions officers would be looking for students to go above and beyond a superficial response, but your essay is so unclear that I really have no idea what you mean. The few bits of ideas I picked out near the end don't even make sense.
"whatever we're doing right, isn't seen as important, and whatever "needs attention" and "needs fixing" is important, in such a case."
How did you come to that conclusion? Things that are significant affect our lives dramatically. It's really that simple. So a student who writes "the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is important to me" is probably just serving sugar coated bullshit, and you've left out the sugar and just given us convoluted, pseudo-intellectual bullshit.
I know all these posts seem very hostile but we have no idea what you're saying 90% of the time, and the other 10% just seems illogical.
And in the end I did not end up saying very much. I can understand the satire in writing an essay full of nothing, while criticizing others who essentially write nothing about something but the writing is holding it back too much. You can be absurdly vague and nonsensical as long as you're actually using proper sentence structure. In this case, you've just flipped the rules of grammar on its head.
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Many of the criticisms above seem to apply more to the posts they are making than anything I've written. Wishful thinking abound.
inky's response was ok. no disrespect to him. i think the topic said, it was honest. so people assuming it's dishonest because the way it's written isn't maximally easy or entertaining for them, really should try applying the rule of charity a little more and seeing if it really leads them astray. this isn't some creation anagalous to a painting, "trying" or "choosing" to "express" something in some "symbolic" way. it's a response, my honest response to a question like this. the one i was capable of at first glance. i smell the implied tones of the question from miles in every direction and am not going to ignore them in and pretend i believe in all that. you may as well have asked an atheist "how has christianity made you a better person?". that's exactly how the question is for me, because whatever "importance" can be assumed to mean it is either a mistake or never enough. so i hope this little rant clears up some confusion but i know it won't.
edit: PROMPT: Choose an issue of importance to you - the issue could be personal, school related, local, political, or international in scope - and write an essay in which you explain the significance of that issue to yourself, your family, your community, or your generation.
My life is vacuous. The only issues are practical. How to spend less on laundry. How to get paid more than $8/hour. How to have health insurance. I have nothing I would call a family, only people who believe in that crap and will bail me out, and that I would be obligated to do the same were I funded so well. School, local, political, international... I don't believe any of that is mine. We may as well talk about 400 BC because that's as connected to me as anything else. Family, self, community, generation: I don't believe it is there in any real sense. What one person means when they talk about it, is not something I could ever mean, and only something I would argue against (easily) in each case.
This probably sounds moody or w/e on the internet. It's a neutral tone to me; seriousness may sound depressing to "today"'s ear, but it's nothing to me (how could it be?). I do my chores and drink my tea and meditate. All these stories people string up about their country, their class, their religion or science or race, the future of their species, the curing of the old, their past or future, the inspirationality of having babies or love mariages, it is all a long droning note to me of foul, foul, boring things, like staring into the ugliest wall of a city. It's like stale bread. But don't read my tone wrong. I only have to glance inward before I smile and can embrace it all. I hope you understand now. And they blinked thusly.
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United States22883 Posts
so people assuming it's dishonest because the way it's written isn't maximally easy or entertaining for them, really should try applying the rule of charity a little more and seeing if it really leads them astray.
YOU ARE NOT A GOOD WRITER. THE THINGS YOU WRITE ARE NOT LEGIBLE BECAUSE YOU HAVE A VERY POOR UNDERSTANDING OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. The only realistic conclusion anyone can make from your essay is that English is not your first language.
"maximally easy" "rule of charity"? You're like a GED student pretending to be in AP English. Honestly, I would critique more of what you said but I simply can't understand it. Writing me off as someone who can't get past things "maximally easy or entertaining" is a very incorrect assumption.
My life is vacuous. The only issues are practical. How to spend less on laundry. How to get paid more than $8/hour. How to have health insurance. I have nothing I would call a family, only people who believe in that crap and will bail me out, and that I would be obligated to do the same were I funded so well. School, local, political, international... I don't believe any of that is mine. We may as well talk about 400 BC because that's as connected to me as anything else. Family, self, community, generation: I don't believe it is there in any real sense. What one person means when they talk about it, is not something I could ever mean, and only something I would argue against(easily) in each case.
This probably sounds moody or w/e on the internet. It's a neutral tone to me; seriousness may sound depressing to "today"'s ear, but it's nothing to me (how could it be?). I do my chores and drink my tea and meditate. All these stories people string up about their country, their class, their religion or science or race, the future of their species, the curing of the old, their past or future, the inspirationality of having babies or love mariages, it is all a long droning note to me of foul, foul, boring things, like staring into the ugliest wall of a city. It's like stale bread. But don't read my tone wrong. I only have to glance inward before I smile and can embrace it all. I hope you understand now. And they blinked thusly.
This I can understand. How can you be so absolutely uninspired? You have no aspirations or pleasures? What did you say when people asked what you want to be when you grow up? Did you just say, "I want to sustain"?
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legibility doesn't mean that. you apparently don't understand a few things i said and jumped to the conclusions most comfortable for you, which i understand. if you want to improve my writing you will need to put forth a little more effort. if you just want to deliver a blow to my ego, again, you'll need to either put forth more content than "YOU SUCK U DONT NO ENGLISH" because various phd's contradict your strong beliefs. i am willing to hear you out, but your intentions are not really clear. either of your posts have not said as much as you think they have said, while it seems you have understood much less than is clear in what i have posted.
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United States22883 Posts
you apparently don't understand a few things i said and jumped to the conclusions most comfortable for you Again, I didn't understand the majority of what you said. My intention is this: I want to critique and analyze your logic/thinking, but I can't understand it - it's like knowing Japanese kanji and trying to read Chinese. I can pick out bits and pieces, but as a whole I simply do not understand what you said. I think most people who have posted have the same problem.
If that's not the case and it turns out I'm just exceptionally stupid, then I'll shut up.
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Jibba, my above response was in response to your post before you edited it. If you could move the new content to a newer post that would clean up this thread somewhat.
I don't think I said much in the post you are critiquing. you aren't missing much. but the last thing i give a fuck about is trying to look smart. if i write unclearly, badly, and say nothing, fine, but i am not doing it because of some insecurity. i am slapping keys with my fingers to spit out "thoughts", nothing more. if you want me to produce an outline of the essay, and reorganize it and then rewrite it, maybe i'll do something like that. hell apparently i need to.
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I{
BACKSTORY: I saw this prompt for a college entrance essay in another blog, and being a college graduate with, throughout my life, a very cynical outlook on education, I took it upon myself to take the prompt and answer it in a more candid manner than I would or could when younger and actually trying to get into a college as a recent high school graduate.
PROMPT: Choose an issue of importance to you - the issue could be personal, school related, local, political, or international in scope - and write an essay in which you explain the significance of that issue to yourself, your family, your community, or your generation.}
I. The start
A. Thought it would be cool to answer a college entrance question as though it were a real question, since I h8 education etc.
B. The Q. that will be faced is "Choose an issue of importance to you - ..."
II{
Let me be candid and be clear right from the start, and testify as to my understanding of the question before giving an answer: many people use the general cloud of "meaningfulness" words (in the above prompt, for instance, "importance" and "significance" are used in this manner) to signify a sort of flavor or "tag" on certain events, ideas, theories, problems, etc. I am not arrogant enough to assume that all these people when they say this mean the same thing.}
II. The words in the question, mean many things to many people, and also not necessarily anything to me in this context. Have to completely ignore this to answer the question, as this issue is too much to tackle in books, let alone a single short essay. Have to pretend to not know this, have to pretend you are a child. So the question is asking me to put on a child mask and make child words. Contrast this with the supposed seriousness of the question and the process. Yet what can I produce for this question any other way? Anyways...
III{
What I know is that people do things. Significance to me, is in the doing. How one spends their life really signifies significance. How they talk, is something else. Maybe it is another kind of significance, but I am not prepared to argue one vs. the other or some amalgamation of the two in any way. So for instance, if someone says that population control is super important, I say, look at their life. Fourty hours a week working at Starbucks, 3.5 hours a week jacking off, $500 a year donated to whatever charity--equals what, in terms of what must be important to them? Obviously the calculus need go much further than that, but I hope you can figure out what I'm getting at here, so I can move on.
In summary, I'm a skeptic when it comes to "importance" or "significance." Let what people do, speak for itself. I'm sitting here typing this, pretending it is so I can impress you and get into college. Lofty "issues" are miles away from this project and it is a pretense to pretend any "issue" in the sense you must mean, "personal, school related, local, political, or international in scope" means fuckall to me.}
III. What can the question possibly mean to me?
A. I state how little I can say about what "I know", to contextualize this pursuit of "explaining the signifiance of the issue". You may notice I have failed to even choose an issue yet. How can I choose an issue in the face of all these problems with the prompt to choose an issue and perform X Y Z with it? Therefore my issue is to go over all these problems with the task, which I cannot even begin to complete in the words allotted. Again, were I to take the voice that is taught in the public chatter, I could easily pretend and start spouting out some narrative. But the whole idea here was to really be honest.
B. I try to give some rudimentary thoughts on why the expected (and possible) responses to this prompt will be utterly dishonest--because they ignore so much. I could only write about some "important" issue feeling utterly false and self conscious, and I think I make it clear why. Because my life does not reflect anything like that. I'm not tithing, I'm not donating, I'm not "keeping up" on "what's important", or "participating" in "important discussions." Even elections I may become somewhat informed in before I vote, I hardly think the outcome is important, let alone my vote. I have no participation to speak of, so no importance to speak of. In fact the most important thing in my week probably right now is this very post. So I am forced to lie to answer a question like this one, and this is what I am getting at here.
C. So I don't have a definitive assumption to make the meaning of this question (in any honest form) clear at all. Pollution, child homelessness, dog rape, are stories on the news that maybe should make me shed an emo tear, or donate dimes for children without legs. IDK and I'm not going to know. Maybe I'm a bastard for not sorting through the ocean of these types of things out there. Maybe my life is entirely oriented in an immoral fashion. But again, no room to get into that here. Gonna try to figure out what morality is, where it comes from, what we should do about it? That isn't even an issue for our times. That one is long since dead.
V{
Maybe it "feels" like it means more, and maybe in some of the games we play with speaking, "it does." For instance people will argue that what is important is what saves the most lives, or prolongs their life or certain people the most, or what makes people feel most compelled to act, or to cry "ought," or to cry. Maybe "it's important" to figure out which of these games yield "true results", or what that means. Whatever. But such a reality is not reflected in anything I do. I hereby take my own arbitrary stance on the meaning of "importance"--that it is the substance behind actions (and decisions, in the sense that they even exist).}
VI{
The only issue at play for me is this very issue of "importance." Does "importance" exist, or is it just the shadow of actual being? For, we easily see what people do. Is "significance" then just like a shadow of what really happens and exists, following it along? People brush their teeth. Saying it's important for them to do it seems somehow, just tautological and meaningless. But this seems to be necessary from my conception of importance. Yet if we take other options for the idea, then "importance" becomes "ought yet naught", equally frivolous. Just think about it: whatever we're doing right, isn't seen as important, and whatever "needs attention" and "needs fixing" is important, in such a case. It's just about needs. Aren't the needs already met equally important? The concept becomes useless and we are reduced to figuring out which saves the most money, children, sperm, seconds of suffering pain at such and such a level, whatever. Or arguing over which is what we must save, increase, reduce, etc.}
VII{
I believe I have explained the issue of meaning or "importance or significance", a personal "issue", to myself, which seems to be what you asked. If this fails to meet your expectations you have only yourself to blame for not writing better questions.}
No more comments or outlining to do. These sound pretty straightforward to me. I hardly wrote anything at all. I am going to need someone else to point to a select group of sentences for "translation" because it seems redundant for me to elaborate on them all, from my perspective.
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I don't think the harsh and hostile tone of Jibba is at all appropriate here, even though he is essentially right. Criticism could be given in a far more constructive and peaceful manner.
The fact is, Luggy, your writing does have technical problems. This isn't anything particularly shameful, as your writing doesn't seem to really be any worse than the average American's (hell, maybe a good bit better, even if somewhat convoluted), but it is something to work on if you are writing a college essay or anything of a more serious and professional nature. It's especially important to have solid writing if you are putting on a display, which you have done in this blog. It would be different if you were asking for help, as many people have seemingly done here. Anyway, I recommend picking up "Elements of Style," which I think is by E.B. White. It will help you, and I don't say that condescendingly.
More troubling to me than your writing, by far, is that you genuinely don't seem to care about anything. I can relate to the somewhat Zen attitude you were hinting at in a later post in this thread (your rewrite, I think), but I don't think that this "Zen" sort of detachment depends on a lack of concern or aspiration.
I am genuinely curious to know if you are depressed. I hope you aren't, but if you are, maybe you should talk about it directly.
In response to some of your ideas in this thread, I'll say this: there is nothing wrong with caring about things. It is true that people fall short of their own ideals, but this doesn't make ideals bad. Hypocrisy is troubling, but hypocrisy is something separate from merely falling short of your ideals. If anything, I wish more young people had greater aspirations than they do. The typical college student has acquisition of wealth as their main goal. I'd like to hear more about world peace, environmental and social justice, or... whatever, even if people don't live up to their pretty words. It's much nicer than hearing someone say they believe in nothing, that nothing matters, etc...
Peace, dude.
Nick / Inky
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United States22883 Posts
Well, he's an arrogant dick so I have no problem being rude.
But yes, your apathy comes across as depression.
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EPT
