Undergraduate / 'Favorite place to get lost' - Discuss your favorite place to get lost (UVA) [4]

When I am lost in a landscape of pages, surrounded by a sea of words, my lungs full of the scent of paper, I am not interested in being found at all. George R.R. Martin once wrote that "a reader lives a thousand lives before he dies," and that's exactly what I do when I'm "lost." I'm off having an adventure, meeting new friends, living a life I would otherwise never have gotten to live.

I live in a family where both my parents are extremely consumed with managing a family business. I see my dad for maybe two or three hours a day. I grew up with extraordinary older sister who set the standards extremely high and even when she's gone to live in another city, her shadow remains at home. It became inevitable that I wanted an escape from my boring, mundane, often stressed-out life and that's how I discovered fiction. While I may be physically bound to stay in Virginia, living the life of an ordinary student, my minds wanders to 19th century England, a school of witchcraft and wizardry, a camp for demigods, and an institute for shadowhunters.

As I've gotten older, my friends have turned their backs on literature, choosing, instead, movies, TV shows, or video games. I, however, could never forget magic of losing yourself in a good book. I've never forgotten the friends I've made in vampires, werewolves, psychics, witches, warriors, angels, and regular humans.

Undergraduate / 'Virginia Discovery Museum' - Common app extracurricular essay [3]

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

As I faced the wall of hundreds of bees, I took a deep breath and reassured myself that the clear plastic covering separating me and the insects was completely durable and could not possibly break. Forcibly eroding my anxiety with enthusiasm, I turn towards the toddlers I had in tow, explaining the purpose of this exhibit. Their eyes light up as I let them go right up to the very front of the plastic where they can hear the faint buzzing.

The Virginia Discovery Museum has a myriad of exhibits for children, an art room, a dress-up station, and an indoor playground, but something about the bee hive has always captured their attention more than the rest. When I first started volunteering at the museum, I was fascinated with the hive, but mostly wary, having always feared bees. The preschoolers I met, on the other hand, fearlessly put their faces right in front of the bees, with only a thin layer of plastic to protect them, while I, a high school student, could barely muster up the guts to do so.

Each time I show this exhibit to kids, I see the same expression, full of naked wonder, devoid of fear, and I realize that I still have a lot to learn. But I start by bringing my own face closer to the bees.