"Dunderheadedness"

I was filling out my Academic All-Stars application the other day when I came to the essay section and stopped dead in my tracks. Most college and scholarship essay prompts are bad. It's a unfortunate and pretty much unavoidable reality. But the lovely people at Academic All-Stars have gone beyond the idiot, the dolt, the moron this year. Their prompt can only be described by the nonexistent word: "dunderheadedness". The prompt you ask? It is a masterpiece of concision--merely the two words: "Why me?" That's it! "Why me?" Actually, I believe that this cannot qualify as a prompt and therefore cannot warrent a response by me. You see, the purpose of the essay prompt for college or a scholarship is to provide some written context or "prompt" (hence the term) for the applicant to express themselves to the reader the desired manner. This is done so that the reader can answer the question "why him or her?" The applicant is not to answer this question himself or herself. It is not, and should not be the duty of the applicant in an essay to explain why he/she should be chosen. Doing so accurately would require that the applicant argue that he/she is superior the rest of the applicant pool--something about which he/she has no knowledge and which would necessarily conjure up an impression of an arrogant and conceited person, thereby defeating the entire process of the application itself. Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, it is entirely impossible to write a truly good essay on the topic of the superiority of one's self. A good essay has some nonobvious, or preferably profound, purpose or revalation that is argued. Aesthetically, there is nothing profound or interesting or even tasteful at all about self-aggrandizement. QED. (<-- How is that for self-aggrandizement, eh?)