The Tower of Hanoi

Time check: 12:34 AM

I have been thinking a lot about my application essay for months now. I have written a lot of essays talking about different topics about me, and they all seem nice to me. But I don't think nice is enough. And I don't know if my new idea is any better.

Believe it or not, I love studying. It is hard to believe sometimes because it is hard to love something that is hard. Woah. A lot of 'hard's there.Well, I love it because whenever I do study, I feel like I am doing something that will lead to something that is prodigiously great. I feel like I am the studious person now that I was very not when I was younger. So, today, I went for a little break and went down from our study attic to sit down beside my mom on the couch. She called to show me how my four-year-old brother managed to solve the four-disc level of the tower of hanoi. I love the tower of hanoi, and I am very proud and glad that my little brother is getting the hang of it. I borrowed it from my brothers and solved the seven-disc level once more.

For the sake of those who don't know how to or what the tower of hanoi is, I am going to explain it to you. Here is a picture of my mom's tower of hanoi (She's a high school math teacher):

<I will put it here when I have the chance this week to borrow my sister's laptop. This is my uncle's iPad and unfortunately, it won't allow me to upload the photo to Blogger.>

The main objective of the challenge is for you to move all the discs to another pole. You have to first decide on what level you want to play. If you are brave enough to solve the seven-disc level for your very first tower of hanoi game, then let us use it as an example. If you choose the seven then you have to have a required number of moves. The things that make this fun is that you can only move one disc at a time, with a required number of moves, at the shortest time possible in order to win, if ever you are competing with other challengers. So, in order to know how many moves you have to use is to substitute the number of discs you will be using to x : (2^x) - 1! (That wasn't a factorial. It is supposed to boost excitement.)

Now that you know how to solve it, or at least how to solve it legally, I can tell you why I mentioned it. While I was solving the seven-disc level again, I figured that it is a great model of our lives, specifically mine. While solving it, you would inevitably think that it is all going wrongly. Moving this disc to that pole, and that disc to another, if you stop and look at it, well it looks like a big mess. But there also are times, while you are moving discs, you can already foresee what will happen in the next five moves. There are a lot of those good and bad times. In life, we always think that whenever we make bad decisions or whenever we encounter failures, our life is a big mess already. But it is not. It may seem bad but it is all part of the bigger challenge. What we have to do is to make the right decisions next time, and that is definitely not far from an hour after reading this. If you will just stay positive and learn from your mistakes, you will see that everything falls into its rightful place. It is life. It is a valuable gift from God. He would not put us amidst anything we cannot get through. And when you finish your tower of hanoi, you will see how some events that may seem so difficult and messy can actually lead to something great if you just learn from it and look at it in a different perspective.
When you finish your tower of hanoi, you will see that you made a prodigious step in life. That you are moving forward. And, again, when you finish your tower of hanoi, you would ask for more discs.



P.S. - Let others know about the tower of hanoi, to not only bring change to yourself, but to others as well.

Time check: 1:08 AM

Take care and God bless!

- Daniela Villegas