Undergraduate / Special needs student ; STANFORD - WHAT MATTERS TO YOU AND WHY? [16]

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"Buuul, beeeer, c-laaaa, c-c-c-
"Cr," I corrected Derek, a special needs student to whom I teach at Kumon.
This was his first day working with new material. He had officially moved from level 5A, learning sounds, to 4A, forming blends with two letters. I could sense his hesitation and increasing frustration as he tried to formulate the sounds of each blend with his mouth.

"Repeat after me, cccccrrrr," I said, enunciating the way the mouth created the sound.
After a few moments of distracting himself by playing with his pencil, he went back to work and gave his best effort to sound out the remaining blends that he needed to study that day. I began to focus my attention on the three other students around me. At the moment, I had Payal, who was working on differentiating the "r" sound from "l," Erin, who, despite never completing any of her homework, was zooming through her reading, and Sam, who had trouble distinguishing sixteen from twenty-six, but now, a month later, was practicing his plus two's.

Each child at my table was building a foundation for future knowledge, and I knew that I played a part in the construction. Since my first day at Kumon, I have grown to absolutely love teaching. My students, ranging from three- to six- years old, have progressed so much. As each student learns a new skill that was entirely foreign to him or her the week before, my pride for them increases, and I feel humbled. Through them, I, too, have gained so much knowledge, especially insight into how children learn and develop. As they have advanced, I have gained understanding of how they comprehend that "cat" sounds the way it does and that sixty comes after fifty-nine.

Through teaching, I have been able to help these children achieve their best at such a young age and have acquired a great amount of satisfaction from doing so. I know that by teaching, I am making a difference for each child and building a foundation on which they will grow and use as support for further knowledge.

Undergraduate / Mousetrap car - STANFORD UNIVERSITY - INTELLECTUAL VITALITY [5]

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

"1, 2, 3, go!" I exclaimed as I set off the trigger. Nothing happened. This was my tenth attempt, and the car remained motionless. Tears began to blur my eyesight as I tried to conjure up another solution.

As part of a semester group project, my physics one teacher told us to create a mousetrap car that could drive itself five feet forward and three feet in reverse. As my first engineering project, it seemed like a daunting task. After days of research and collaboration, my partners and I obtained all the necessary materials and began to build our car. Once our first prototype was ready, we eagerly tested it. It didn't work. The wheels needed better reinforcements. We applied the changes and tried again.

It still didn't work.
The material of the base of the car had to be lighter.
Again, nothing.
We made a third change. And a fourth one. And a fifth.
After each attempt, my optimism faltered. Though I spent hours reading articles and watching videos that discussed the processes in building a mousetrap car, I could not succeed. However, I maintained my determination. Continuing my research, I discovered ways to decrease friction and increase traction. I began to understand how significantly important it was to use the right amount of torque to rotate the levers that pulled the wheels to move. I tried to apply this knowledge into building the car, yet to no avail. It simply would not budge.

Though I was not successful in engineering the car, I nonetheless gained insight into the processes of thinking analytically and critically. I had to use problem solving skills to figure out the errors with my design and conceive a better scheme. This project, my first extreme challenge in critical thinking, stimulated me intellectually, and sparked a new desire to further test myself.

A year after, a friend was approached with the same assignment.
"How did you build the car?" she asked me.
"Well," I smirked, "I can give you about a dozen ways of how not to build one."

Undergraduate / I yearn to expand my education ; COMMON APP [3]

Hella urgent. I really only need advise on whether the paragraphs in bold make sense and flow with the rest of the essay

Walking into the white-washed hospital room with the speech therapist, I noticed the elderly patient, sitting upright in the cumbersome bed and struggling to open his mouth to say hello. I only knew him by "patient #018." Still, I felt the need to hold his hand and utter the expression heard repeatedly in the building: "Everything will be all right." In the next ten minutes, the speech therapist asked him to locate a variety of objects in the room. When she asked him to point to the window, he raised his frail arms and pointed instead to the phone on the opposite side of the room. I desperately wanted to help. I felt an urge to run outside and scream, as if that would magically solve the problem.

But what could I really do? I was only a summer volunteer, a 16-year-old who cleaned the microwave in the staff lounge and refilled water in the patients' rooms each morning. As a never-ending chain of "only ifs" ran through my mind, I tried unsuccessfully to hold back my tears. Feeling a single drop trickle down my face, I stared at patient #018, wondering how his life had been before he entered this emotionally agonizing realm of continuous check-ups, injections of IV fluids, and signs reminding one to "Please call. Don't fall." I pictured his wife sitting by his bed on sleepless nights, doubting that life would ever revert back to normal. Walking through the hospital corridors after that appointment, I asked myself, "Why?" I thirsted for the answers.

I suppose it's clichĂŠ to say that was the day that changed everything; the moment that my life became "Claritin Clear," and I realized that within the next ten years, I wanted to see the title "M.D." after my name. Prior to the medical volunteer program, the driving forces behind my interest in medicine were the desire to help others and the academic rigors of the field. After my vivid encounter with patient #018, I became increasingly fascinated with the complexity of the human body and how suddenly it could succumb to the tiniest shift. I ached to learn more about how to get to the roots of such problems and how to help patients transcend them.

However, patient #018 also made an unexpected, personal impact. As the first patient with whom I had a lengthy encounter with while volunteering, he quickly made a profound impression within the first few minutes. Even though I never saw him again, I couldn't get him out of my mind for many days. I tried to imagine myself in his position but found it hard to fathom the number of difficulties he had to endure. Witnessing how frustrated he was by his disability prompted me to be more patient in my interactions with others. I started to be increasingly objective, compassionate, and tolerant.

Though it wasn't possible for me to treat his disorder, I knew I could do something. I took an opportunity to shadow a neurologist later that year and watched eleven surgeries. As the nurses wheeled each patient into the operation room, I began to empathize with them and tried to understand the mechanisms behind their troubles. When I later saw the joys of the patients and their families in the recovery room, I myself felt blissful since they had started their journey onto recovery.

The image of patient #018, shoulders drooped and eyes casted downwards, remains prominent in my mind to this day. His short period in my life has inspired me to be more determined and dedicated in broadening my never-ending curiosity and tenacity. I yearn to expand my education so that I can make a valuable mark on the lives of others and become a person who has the solutions and the utmost compassion.