I knew that over the summer before my senior year, I would be assigned three novels to read, so I decided to get a head start over Christmas break of my junior year. Choosing three books from the list was hard. But, the moment I saw Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse on the list, I knew it had to be one of the novels I read. Siddhartha is not afraid to question authority and believes nobody is above being questioned. He is on a quest to gather as much knowledge he can and find enlightenment. I had studied transcendentalism earlier that year, but this was the first time I felt a real connection to the ideals. I felt inspired to find my own path and to not take what people said at surface value any longer. Analyzing and questioning became parts
