Undergraduate / 'Connecting with other cultures' - Short Answer Michigan--Diversity Essay [4]

"We know that diversity makes us a better university -- better for learning, for teaching, and for conducting research."
(U-M President Mary Sue Coleman)
Share an experience through which you have gained respect for intellectual, social, or cultural differences. Comment on how your personal experiences and achievements would contribute to the diversity of the University of Michigan. (Approximately 250 words)

Last year my family took on the responsibility of welcoming into our family a 16-year old foreign exchange student from Germany named Simon Bohnacker. My experience with Simon helped me to gain respect for cultural differences.

In addition to German and English, Simon was nearly fluent in Spanish, spoke a great deal of French, and could read Arabic. My respect for his multilingualism grew after our ski-trip together to Salt Lake City. On a bus ride back from an exhausting day of skiing, Simon taught me how to say, "I am tired" in German: "Ich bin mïde." Minutes later we realized the couple sitting across from us was also from Germany. I watched silently as Simon conversed in rapid German with them. Seeing him be able to change over from one culture to another in an instant looked very appealing to me. I decided to test my new-found vocabulary and shouted out in a loud, annoying voice: "ICH BIN MïDA!" The couple stared at me for a second, confused, then, realizing I wasn't another German, laughed pleasantly. I spent the remaining 45 minutes of the bus ride conversing with the couple by having Simon tell me how to ask certain questions in German. The joy I felt from connecting with these people transformed into a respect I still hold today. My bus ride experience was just one of the many valuable cultural experiences I shared with Simon.

Simon taught me to connect with other cultures. Because of his influence, I have become a more open-minded person, a quality which will help me embrace other cultures at the University of Michigan. Go bucks.

Undergraduate / 'The Backyard Baseball League' - Common Application Personal Essay- Wiffleball [3]

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

Here is my essay:

Wiffleball is generally recognized as a children's recreational activity. Even I viewed it as a children's game until a few years ago when my friends and I formed a neighborhood wiffleball league. The "Backyard Baseball League", as we dubbed it, functioned not only as an athletic competition, but also as a litmus test for my own self-discovery.

My friends and I founded the "Backyard Baseball League", or BBL, during the summer after my eighth grade year, a time when identifying my likes and dislikes would be especially important due to the oncoming of high school. In the 2006 opening season, the BBL included a meager eight players, a number that would increase to over forty in the later seasons. Of those eight members, myself and two others emerged as leaders of the tiny organization.

As leaders, we desired for the league to become more official. We fashioned our own rulebook, invented our own slogan ("Just Swing"), and recorded our own stats. The ease with which these ideas were made concrete astonished me. I had never worked with such efficiency before. I attributed my success to the pleasure I received from constructing new ideas. Doing anything is much easier when it's possible to enjoy it simultaneously. I soon realized I had a passion for creating and implementing novel ideas. For example, the issue of recording statistics proved difficult. It would not be possible to use an actual baseball scorecard to record stats due to our league's unusual rules. I seized this opportunity to create my own scorecard, specially designed to accommodate the BBL. I created that scorecard four years ago; the BBL still uses it today. I never would have made this self-discovery, if the BBL never existed.

Statistics played a major role in the development of the Backyard Baseball League, at least, in my eyes it did. Following an evening a wiffleball, my friend and I would sit down and input the stats from the scorecard into a spreadsheet on Microsoft Excel, which I had programmed to automatically calculate batting averages and other stats. I enjoyed programming the spreadsheets more than the average person should. Of the forty-plus players in the BBL, very few of them cared for their stats. Nevertheless, I spent hours working on new, more automated spreadsheets. After one particularly long night on the computer, I realized what motivated me to continue working with the statistics even though no one cared; I had a strong passion for math, and programming. This self-discovery is one I truly value, because it helped me to realize that I would like to major in mathematics and computer science in college. Finally discovering what truly gives me happiness, I can say, is the result of a few neighborhood friends and their desire to play wiffleball.