Undergraduate / Common App main essay: 'Paradoxical Christian' [3]

Hi, can you guys give me feedback on my essay, because I'm pretty at a loss of what to think of it,
I'm mainly emphasizing church as a huge influence in my life as I've grown up, and kind of want to show how church made me engaged in lots of activities; it wasn't just a religious duty like sitting through preaching and stuff...

Thanks :)

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PROMPT
A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community, or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you.

Or maybe I should have it fall under this prompt:

Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.

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ESSAY

It was ironic, that though I loved my church and half my identity was formed there, the term I was most uncomfortable with being labeled was "Christian." Because it seemed like it was painted one color, a word too opaque to reveal how dynamic was my faith in my life and how colorful it really made it. Outside church, I almost hated terming myself 'Christian', because of all it connoted. Always whenever I told people outside who were not Christian that I was a Christian, it always evoked the image a young girl, extreme, uptight and lacking interesting hobbies. My friends respected me and the way my person was shaped by my religion, but when I sometimes excused myself from an activity because of a church function, they might shake their heads and teasingly say, "Why are you so church-active?" As I was younger, I was taken aback by the reactions of my friends from school and kept my church life pertaining more as an extracurricular than anything I would openly speak of in school. Only it puzzled me that though many kids at school and I shared common interests, senses of humor, and curiosity for the same stimulating subjects, I wondered that they couldn't also take interest in church as I did. For a church stayed as my area and they were content to not look into it.

Though later on I realized it was because they only knew of 'church' as cursorily and on the surface as I have been in constantly referring to it only by name. Throughout high school, my church underwent many changes, as we moved into a new community that was much more racially diverse. It was one of the chief reasons I loved church outreaches and its opportunities to meet people everywhere in the community and around the city. During one Halloween, our church creatively decided to set up a Halloween, Hallelujah Festival for the kids and their families living around there. On the day of the Festival, I was very surprised when I began to see some unknown faces of kids and families of various ethnicities approach our church lawn to join the amusement of our games booths, food and prizes. As I became more open in speaking to them, I found the community very amiable and as full of humor, youthfulness, and energy as we. Some of the new people we met also began joining our church as a result of the warm encounter and began to enjoy the whole rhythm of being part of church. The effect of this event upon me was similar to the ones the other church outreaches had on me. In every activity like these, I see how my church is only mysterious and perhaps uninviting to those who do not know what it was like inside the doors. Thus I began to be more open-minded and truly curious of how my own friends saw Christianity, and was surprised by their ideas when they shared with me. Some were misconceptions, such as the ones I had had about them. I began to respect my friends' opinions more and shared my own truthfully, and to my surprise, some even voluntarily joined me to church to participate in activities. This gave me the patience, to first understand the views of another before I judged them to be completely adverse to every form of religion, as I hoped they would also be to me before they judged me simply 'Christian' with many rules and perfect attendance.

Undergraduate / Stanford: LETTER TO ROOMMATE- love, Chinese girl [2]

Basically, to me I love what I have written, it seems to encapsulate me perfectly, but unfortunately it is about 600 characters over the limit...

Please help me know which parts are best to cut down or cut out. :) Thanks!!

Write a note to your future roommate that reveals something about you or that will help your roommate - and us - know you better.

In every way, I am a Chinese girl. My cultural exposure in the US for the past fifteen years I have been living here is mixed with my family's style of Hong Kong humor, and basic Asian-ness. Just look at my shelf and you'll find the myriad of English books, right beside the several series of Cantonese and Mandarin comic books I have. While legitimate Chinese texts are still a bit of a struggle for me to read, I adore my Hong Kong cartoons that are written in the dialect and slang of modern Hong Kong and capture the humor and mannerisms of the people there as well. I have many books of an older Cantonese comic series, called Lao Fu Zi, about a stereotypical Hong Kong old man who makes Chinese traditions and modern culture in Asia seem very humorous. I actually love Asian stereotypes and they're not offensive to me because I have learned to appreciate my culture. I find stereotypes hilarious because they are sometimes very true about me, the cultural values passed down to me, and my Asian parents. I watched Ping Pong Playa, a 2007 movie about a Chinese boy undoing Chinese tradition and stereotypes while, ironically, being forced to be a Ping Pong teacher. After about five years, the stereotypes were still so accurate. The movie's motto was "Don't Just Win, Destroy" and I laughed at that reflection of my culture's stereotyped "Tiger-mom"-driven ambition, which actually arose from Confucian values for working hard. I admit I fit some stereotypes: I enjoyed AP classes and sometimes only took them because normal classes covered too little material to keep me interested, I play the violin, and if I'm not, I wish I were a master at chess. But I must say I love my life in America. I like how my friends have their own tastes. At school I have friends who love photography, Tumblr, the internet, and these interests overlap with one another. It got me interested in the internet, beyond just search engines and information, and even though people advise kids to stop living their lives through the internet, I can't ignore how much of people's creativity and bizarre talents is passed through the net. It's not just an internet café, it's an art portfolio that everyone can add things to, and every art can be wildly different from the other. On the internet, I can watch Chinese news and improve my Chinese speaking, keep up-to-date on news about others, finally learn what dubstepping is, or watch the concert-master's violin solo on YouTube and try to mimic it. So I have to face it; only living in my world can get boring sometimes. Can't wait to meet you.

Undergraduate / 'Beauty' - Stanford What matters to you [2]

Hi, please give me you guys' feedback on this essay...

Thanks in advance, everyone for your help!

What matters to you, and why?

Being a girl, I think it is inherent in me to love beauty. The topic of beauty has always attracted me. As with beautiful art, I am drawn to fine clothes, stylish hair, pretty appearances. At school I cannot ignore the looks, fashion and outward appearances all around me. Usually, the pretty girls win the praise of good-looking guys, and the other way around.

Yet I know I am not one of them. So I am out of that game by default. I could rage against the shallowness of outward beauty, but that would only reveal the deep regret that I cannot have it as well. I also wanted the comfort of having a pretty face and features to be confident about, whether at school or among strangers or in this society that valued good looks. It used to bother me greatly, as I would look in the mirror and wish for these eyes to be bigger and the neck to be thinner, and notice how my mild scoliosis kept my figure from being closer to ideal, in today's standards.

Yet when I gazed at the beautiful people, I sometimes saw a jarring contrast that diminished their outward beauty. I saw that many pretty people at school did not say or do pretty things, and were not pretty to be around. I saw starlets on television and magazine ads whose familiar gorgeous faces only reminded me of their obnoxious, crude, or proud characters. I look at my friends, and though they are not all beautiful, they are beautiful to be around. Then I read in the Bible how God did not look at what people looked at, for people judged through outward appearances, but God judged the heart, the inner person. I realized that true, unfading beauty comes with a good heart and only becomes more beautiful as a person ages, because of the additional wisdom she has gained through life experiences. It is the kind of beauty everyone was born to have, unlike outward looks which are set in at birth. I know now and am happy that I can still pursue beauty, genuine beauty, because I do not think I could ever stop caring about being beautiful.

Undergraduate / Stanford Intellectual Experience: SilverPlus Internship [5]

Hi! Can you guys read this over and let me know what you think about, anything you like/don't like about it. Thanks for all your comments in advance :)

Stanford students possess an intellectual vitality. Reflect on an idea or experience that has been important to your intellectual development.

As a child, I wanted to be a ballerina, a writer, or an inventor. I always had the vision of designing and creating the next new things that people would love and utilize. In my imagination, I would consider how to make flying cars and portable houses. Because I always just saw the end invention, the process of making it always seemed a bit enigmatic. The desire to be an inventor and the concept of what an inventor was followed me throughout high school. When I took AP Chemistry, AP Alchemy flew out my head as I discovered how every process in the natural world could be explained and measured with numbers and calculations to make very logical sense. In a way, technology also lost some of its mystical appeal to me.

When I was a child, I would find my father's engineering office a boring place with a lot of wire and equipment resembling dialysis machines. But in high school, when I reentered that similar world during a summer internship at SilverPlus Inc., the wires and computer chips had meaning. My intern project was to develop a complex program, which ran on a microcontroller, to make it drive a piezo speaker. I enjoyed programming for its math, but this assignment seemed beyond my level. An engineer taught me the techniques of simplifying a complex piece of code by testing it in smaller chunks, until at last I began to analyze it. I realized that the mystical "engineering genius" I expected of brilliant engineers was their creativity in inventing simple techniques to gracefully solve nested problems. After weeks on this project, I tested my program and made it send voltage currents through the speaker. I saw the voltage waves appear on the oscilloscope and heard the speaker's clear sound with the probe; it was like seeing my creation's pulse and hearing its voice. It mystified me that something I helped invent on a computer could work in real life. I felt that the process of inventing something was probably always more amazing than the end invention itself.

Undergraduate / Stanford Letter to Roommate "Teamplayer" [8]

I appreciate all your comments:) Let me know what you think of this...I wrote it as one fat paragraph because, well, that's the way it has to be pasted into the common app :)

Virtually all of Stanford's undergraduates live on campus. Write a note to your future roommate that reveals something about you or that will help your roommate - and us - know you better.

Dear Roommate: During the car ride here, I passed the time talking to my brother. It made me reflect how growing up with him has taught me humility, maturity, and selflessness. We've actually come a long way to respecting each other more as friends in and outside school. I know it'll be the same for you and me. The violin next to you; it represents teamwork to me. In church worship team, I would improvise guitar chords into beautiful violin harmonies to match the music. I was part of that team and I knew helped the band sound great. You'll find a team player in me, not a perfect one, but a passionate one. Speaking of passion, do you like to eat? At Chinese restaurants I have fun ordering food in my Americanized accent-Chinese. In the past, I couldn't communicate fluently with others in Asia, which motivated me to learn Chinese just to regain that piece of my culture. I look forward to the fun we'll have if we try cooking the cultural foods of our different houses, though I must warn you: I know how to eat my culture's food far better than I can even begin making it. Don't worry about feshman-15. I enjoy being outdoors, whether jogging alone, or playing group sports with my friends. Nature's irregularity, if not beauty, captivates me and makes me enjoy being outside. I do love long strolls on the beach, or anywhere, for that matter, and I'd get outdoor exercise with you any day. As for food for thought, I can't wait to read college-level fiction. I like talking about books with others, even just to discuss which characters we find dumb. With our massive intellects, our discussions could end up truly profound. Just for starters: Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre? I say Wuthering Heights; girl, not even Jane could outdo a character like Heathcliff, but feel free to differ. If "Two is better than one", then being roommates already makes us 100% better. If "When one falls, the other can pick him up," then I'm glad we'll later understand a lot more what this means.

Undergraduate / 'students doing community' Stanford: Extracurricular or Work Exp- Kiddies and Violins [2]

Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences in the space below (1000 character maximum).

We are Students for the Arts, StARTs. We are high school students doing community service, dedicating our time to further kids' education, answering the call to fight the budget cuts of programs in schools. Each week I and my buddies in this club carpool to a poorer inner-city elementary school to teach musical instruments and arts. The kids are always overly energetic, but also undeniably passionate to learn violin every time I visit. Despite lack of resources they have so much potential. I try to make their light bulbs flicker on to connect learning with future importance. My friends and I do this club to give kids the choice to learn music, so that those who want to can learn, without financial difficulties. Now, I am co-president and organize the classes each week. I love expanding the classes and volunteers, but my real reward is seeing my classmates, even those who dislike school, turn into bigger people and purpose-driven teachers around these kids they are attached to.

Undergraduate / Stanford Significant Exp: Elderly Center + Church [6]

Please offer your comments on this everyone! Thanks in advance...

Also, it is about 560 wds right now. Just to be concise, I hope to make it 500 if possible. It would be great if you guys tell me which parts seem superfluous:) Thanks a bunch!

Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.

I was at church when I heard my parents share their dream of starting an elderly center. My mom said it was "an opportunity and desire from God," but I just groaned at the prospect of being sucked into helping them with this undertaking. Within a few months, they rented a commercial complex and renamed it "Enoch Center". The room's drab appearance seemed fitting for its purpose: to serve elderly. What a unique, divine provision, I thought smugly. Such humble beginnings: a table, cheap plastic chairs, free shelves discarded by others, and a divider to split this big box of a room into two.

I felt even bigger unbelief when my church urgently needed a new building to move into, and decided to move into the tiny Enoch Center. I expected this setup to be temporary and felt rather embarrassed for my church in the meantime. But it surprised me when I saw my church members, both young and old, eagerly help each other lift furniture all around the place. This teamwork of made me rather proud of my church. But though the place now looked decent, I would not have expected that I would come to treasure this building as my second home.

The complex was so small that it was possible for a person to be able to see everyone else in the same room, at any given time. Sometimes there was such a crowd, and hardly space to move about. But instead of anger, there was only laughter, joking, and friendship surrounding me. We all became so close, figuratively and literally, for there was no room not to be; the kitchen was also the office for two pastors, as well as the kids' classroom for Bible study. It was a similar situation throughout the complex. Thus, parents, kids, elderly, and college students all mingled together frequently. We overcame any shyness that could exist. I do not think a picture of a happy family on Christmas could have made me envious when I had this family every Sunday, and it made me grateful to realize that.

Over the five years that my church stayed at Enoch Center, I learned to be a more selfless server of others. Since my parents also managed the senior center, I would be frequently called to help them. On Sundays, I and my friends learned to vacuum the carpet, clean the toilets, and tidy the rooms after church ended. Eventually we simply enjoyed serving our church family in any way we could. I and the other girls helped teach Sunday school to younger kids, and the boys performed "men's work" for the church. Especially as a high school student in the prime of teenage years, when one could either choose to mature or rebel, growing in this church community helped develop my character permanently. Seeing how far my parents' dream has come, I no longer "despise the day of small beginnings" (Zech 4:10) because they can belie the positive turn situations may soon take. After this experience, my trust in God is stronger and my care for man is deeper, and out of a struggle has come great reward. I am glad my parents did not fear humble beginnings or share in my initial mockery. They showed me that conditions on the surface should not scare me away from pursuing a dream that feels right.

Undergraduate / CarnegieMellon(supplement)- Electrical Engineering experience [4]

Hi, can you guys read over this...I know its a bit long, the limit is One page...so ya. If you have essays you'd like feedback from me from, lemme know! I appreciate it and thanks everyone:) BTW...Merry Christmas ppls (almost, like 1 hour away...)

Please submit a one-page, single-spaced essay that explains why you have chosen Carnegie Mellon and your particular major(s), department(s) or program(s). This essay should include the reasons why you've chosen the major(s), any goals or relevant work plans and any other information you would like us to know. If you are applying to more than one college or program, please mention each college or program you are applying to. Because our admission committees review applicants by college and programs, your essay can impact our final decision. Please do not exceed one page for this essay.

Since I was young, I always had the vision of designing and creating the next new product that people would love and utilize. In my imagination, I would consider how to make flying cars and portable houses. But because I only saw the end inventions, the process of making them always seemed a bit enigmatic. The soda-pop machine I had tried inventing failed for poor cardboard mechanics. Still, the desire to be an inventor and the concept of what an inventor was followed me throughout high school. The year I took AP Chemistry, AP Alchemy flew out my head as I discovered how many systems could be explained and measured with numbers and calculations to make very logical sense. Now when I saw the latest iPad or heard about the new electric car, I wanted to know how its inventors went through the process of creating it.

When I was a child, my father's engineering office seemed like boring place with a lot of wire and equipment resembling dialysis machines. But in high school, when I reentered that similar world during a summer internship at SilverPlus Inc., the wires and computer chips had meaning. My internship project was to develop a complex program, which then ran on a microcontroller, to make it drive a piezo speaker that would be used in the company's product. In AP Computer Science, I had enjoyed learning programming and its manipulation of math and algorithms, but this assignment seemed beyond my level. The engineers taught me the techniques of simplifying complex pieces of codes by testing it in smaller chunks systematically. After I learned the ropes I realized that the mystical "engineering genius" I expected of brilliant engineers was their creativity to find simple techniques to gracefully solve nested problems. After weeks on the project, I began running the program on hardware, testing if it could drive voltage currents through the speaker. I saw the voltage waves appear on the oscilloscope and heard the speaker's clear sound with the probe; it was like seeing my creation's pulse and hearing its voice for the first time. I enjoyed using hands-on tools like oscilloscopes and other hardware, which showed me why I had grown uninterested in ACSL club during high school. Though it was a great programming club, its purpose was to learn pure programming, which was mostly but a mental activity. I loved the physical activity of making things, and this internship experience fueled my desire to become an electrical engineer.

When I researched electrical engineering further, I discovered that the field pertained to more than just coding and found that it suited my passion for technology. From interning at a wireless communications company, I was also familiar with the entrepreneurial environment surrounding electronic engineers, who had to watch for the needs, tastes, and trends of their consumers. I saw an engineer also as a businessman and a designer who needed good tastes, both of which I was interested in learning to become. I applied to Carnegie Institute of Technology as first choice, with Electrical Engineering as my major, and the School of Computer Science.

Though I have never visited the college, I can feel that Carnegie students think very laterally and not narrowly. I was glad to learn that this college emphasized interdisciplinary collaboration, because it shows that the students are eager to be influenced by related others in different majors. When I see the amount of activity occurring just within the electrical engineering department, I become excited as I imagine the possibility of one day also participating in hardcore robotics competitions or research of artificial intelligence. Through web-sharing, I can admire the projects students work on in class and in their own individual clubs. I can see they have the ambition to compete with the rest of the tech geeks across the world. Even in magazines, Carnegie Mellon's faculty and students are mentioned often as I read about new technology. It is obvious that the ambition to explore and excel takes a domino-effect across the whole campus and on every student, and I want to be a part of that.

Undergraduate / 'my enjoyment of being a Christian' - Common App: Overcome stereotype [NEW]

Sorry about the length, but if anyone helps me read over this and CUT IT DOWN BY 200 WDS , I would so appreciate it :)

Let me know your guys' thoughts...

And if you can any essays for me to read, give a shout :O

Describe a significant exp, and its impact on you

When I go to school, I do not really know how to share with others my enjoyment of being a Christian. Friends see me as cheery, humorous and sociable, and when one day in class I shared that I fell under the category of a more melancholic person, my peers were surprised I was not rather a sanguine. I had always appeared as a happy-go-lucky Christian, but my friends did not know how often I felt insecure and would turn to God's word and prayer to address my insecurities. Yet I did not reveal this side of me to them, because I did not want to be labeled "Christian". In today's culture, the word seemed very black and white, evoking a religiously prudish and devout person. I know my friends respected my adherence to Christianity, as my personality and character made obvious its good influence in my life. Yet sometimes when I excused myself from an activity because I was committed to attending church, I felt I had put the stereotype back into "Christian", as they shook their heads and teasingly said, "Why are you so church-active? You're too 'good'". I did not know how to gently counter whatever misconceptions they had about church, though I wished I knew. Thus I kept my church life more private, and if I shared it, it was shared only in measures.

I do not think I am very religious, only because my faith is not simply ritualistic devotion. I pray to God in conversation, freely expressing ideas and sentiments about anything that concerns me. I like challenging my opinions and viewpoints with what the Bible says about certain topics, such as seeking to understand how faith and logic overlap, for I feel they must somehow. At church, as I read the Bible with Christian friends and discuss various issues, I learn to be more open-minded to topics that have been downplayed or perverted at school. My family sometimes does not understand my strong devotion to God, so they sometimes call me the "nun". I know it is just playful joking, but I feel stung because it is more misunderstanding.

But the hungry and the poor were often willingly open to such religious beliefs, and this juxtaposition taught me something. After school, I once joined my Christian club to McDonalds, where we performed a "chain reaction". We bought some food, but also paid the money in advance for meals of people who would order food after us, in hopes they would do the same for people after and start a chain reaction of free giving. People were so surprised and grateful that they came to us, eager to know why we did it, and we said it was to show Jesus' love for them. We demonstrated this kindness which mirrored our beliefs, and their reaction was as if they had learned of Christianity for the first time. One man, after eating, came back and said it had been an honor to eat his burger. During another instance, I joined a Christian organization to set up a huge soccer match for kids in a very underprivileged area. I made friends with kids on other teams and at the end of the game, I was surprised they said good bye and "God bless you." I knew the organization had long helped these children, but I realized these rougher-looking kids had also accepted God because of the kindness they experienced from this organization that represented him.

I arrived at my non-conclusion, that in fact I still had a lot to learn about people. I realized I had to put down my own firewall toward my others, put that stereotype behind me, and let them get to know me openly if I wanted them to understand me and my beliefs better. I did not need to know the answers to all their questions, for I still had plenty of my own. It is still awkward to mention my faith to others, but it is getting less awkward with some. Those are my friends whom I listen to a lot more, spend a lot of time with, share my life with a lot more, and who know me for who I am. Often I did not know how to prove anything except that I was genuine.

Undergraduate / Common App Essay: I Dunwanna Grow Up [2]

Hey guys, please read over my essay and comment on it. Does it show its impact on me enough?

Evaluate a significant exp, and its impact on you

In movies, that bustling-city girl, with the top-tier job and grand aspirations, meets a small town boy and realizes that what truly matters in life is true love and not big bucks. Similarly but without the romantic drama, I saw what I would give up as I moved on to top-tier colleges and bigger goals.

In junior year I was surrounded by high school seniors, who endlessly recounted memories of wild times in high school and boasted famous plans for the future. I quickly joined the mania of college dreams, aiming for high grades and extracurricular achievements in preparation for university. But unlike others, I could not also let go of the past. As I reminisced on my fun adventures in past three years, the fact that I would soon have to move away from home cut me in the heart. Behind closed doors, I frequently loathed with tears the fact that life forced me to grow older, that the simplistic fun of past times would be shut behind the pad-locked door of time. At least, I thought, there was one group that never changed: my church youth group, full of friends who stayed with me since childhood.

In the summer after junior year, I went with that group to Big Bear for Youth Retreat. With three seniors celebrating their graduations with us, being there forced me realize that I was also about to move on for good, while this group I left behind would continue without me. The new youths, my newer friends, were filling the places of out-going seniors. I looked around at my friends' faces, but no one was lamenting or resenting this fact; they were all having the time of their lives. Being with them help me answer the question that kept pressing me.

During that trip, we studied the Parable of the Lost Son, and I learned that I was like the two sons in that Bible story. Like the younger prodigal son, who ran loose with his inheritance and squandered it, I had desperately been trying to recreate and relive the childlike, "frivolous" fun I had had in the past. Like the son who felt unfairly treated because his errant brother was warmly welcomed back, I envied the blooming and intimate fellowship the newest youths were just beginning to experience, because it was a blessing I also had.

But just as the younger son soon came to his senses and the older son was corrected in his thinking, so I realized that these feelings were not abnormal. They meant I was ready to move on to different things, responsibilities that require more maturity. I knew our senior friends were not extricating themselves from us by leaving. Even after I, myself, graduated and met new people, to each other we would still be what we always were: brothers and sisters in Christ. In college I would be able to mature further, until again life changed and I would take on a job of greater responsibility. But right now, it is important to move forward, to understand that childhood reflects the past well done -yes, completed - and the future should be done just as well if not better. I know the past has helped ready me for the new paths of life to come.

Undergraduate / 'I loved my church' - Common App MAIN [9]

it's roughly 5?? wds ...Prompt: Significant experience and its impact on you, OR Describe an encounter and how it has demonstrated the importance of diversity to you. OR Topic of your choice

Yes, now ...yes

Thank you kind soul to comment on this:)

It was ironic that, though I loved my church and half my identity was formed there, the term I was uncomfortable with was "Christian." Because it was painted one color, a word too opaque to reveal how dynamic my faith made my life. Outside church, I almost hated terming myself "Christian", because of all it connoted. When I told non-Christians I was a Christian, it evoked the image of a girl, extreme, uptight, and lacking interests. Furthermore, being an Asian-American girl, who fit the stereotypical conservative character, did not provide means to help my friends at school understand my meaningful and adventurous life at church. Friends respected me and how my life was shaped by Christianity, but when I sometimes excused myself from an activity because of a church function, they might shake their heads and teasingly say, "Why are you so church-active?" When I was younger, I was taken aback by these reactions and kept my church life as more of an extracurricular than anything I would openly speak of in school. Only it puzzled me that though they shared with me common interests, senses of humor, and curiosity for the same stimulating subjects, they did not also take an interest in church as I did. Church stayed as my area and they were content to not look into it.

As I started to be more open-minded and truly curious of how my own friends saw Christianity, I was surprised by their ideas when they shared with me. Some were misconceptions, such as the ones I had had about them when I judged them to be completely adverse to forms of religion. At church, Pastor James told my youth group that people were in fact very open to philosophical ideas, it was human nature to be so; it was just a matter of our being willing to engage in mutual openness and let sharing start. I made the effort to respect my friends' opinions more while sharing my own truthfully and, to be honest, some of my friends were painfully philosophical, more so than me. My views centered on God as a loving father; theirs were their own creation, influenced by a father forsaking the home, or another experience, or just popular belief. Though I carried beliefs that could at least address some of their pressing issues and questions, I was sometimes still felt afraid to say them. I realized that what kept people from understanding dynamic Christianity was more my fear of being stereotyped as a goodie-goodie than their misunderstanding of me.

It was as I began to spend more time with my school friends outside of school, just for pleasure, and began to value them as I valued my church friends that communication freed up between us. After playing capture-the-flag with them at night at the Christmas party, and studying with them at Starbucks for hours for our Econ test, and patiently remaining on online chat to listen to their rants on emotional issues, we became genuine friends and not distant school friends with more differences than similarities. After that, we conversed about deeper topics and enjoyed one another's company. I am glad to discover that sharing begins with something I naturally enjoy very much: spending quality time to get to know others first.