Undergraduate / Honor Code essay. How do I make this more fun to read? [4]

The Honor Code at Haverford creates an environment of deep trust, respect, and collegiality between professors and students which, in turn, fosters open dialogue and free intellectual exchange. Talk about the conditions you think are essential to allowing this type of dialogue and exchange in both academic and non-academic settings.

Last September, Mr. S----- began leaping from the corner of one desk to another. Vault, spring off, vault, spring off. He gets two desks in two seconds. What other teacher would have put on a frenzied show to teach his students about the carefully calculated impulses of the body's neurological action potential? 70 mV means resting potential, so the lights ought to be off and the frenzied activity ceases. At -55 mV, the action potential occurs. You know this because he shouts, "Here comes the sodium!" and starts leaping sprightly onto desks again. It is a five minute aerobic workout for him, but my classmates and I will remember what an action potential is for the next ten years.

When teachers clearly care about their students' personal and academic success, an atmosphere of mutual respect and trust is created. Mr. S----'s passion for teaching is boundless, as are his respect and concern for his students. In the classroom, psychology concepts are linked to real life with examples from news articles and pop culture. He stops at nothing to educate and motivate his students. Outside the classroom, he demonstrates immeasurable patience in one-on-one review sessions. It is no question that teachers at L---- care about their students' success; knowing this inspires and empowers my peers and me.

Openness is another key to the creation of the ideal learning environment. Honesty, both on the part of teachers and students, opens the doors to a classroom environment based on mutual trust and respect. My current Government and Politics teacher, Mr. J------, constantly reminds us to speak up when he isn't clear in his lectures. This past Halloween, he offered what I felt was an unnecessary apology to our class for his teaching quality in comparison to teachers who have been at L---- for decades, "I know having an inexperienced teacher is hard. You can ask tons of questions to my colleagues in the department, and they have the answers. I'm still learning. It takes me time to get back to you guys with answers to all your questions." He then proceeded to give us Halloween candy, as something of a consolation prize.

But I never felt that I lost the teacher lottery with Mr. J------. His open honesty touches us everyday. In turn, we are encouraged to be more open with him. Questions keep coming, despite the 24-hour turnaround for answers. Hypotheticals are posited. Suggestions for how to make the class more efficient abound. We partake in class debates, and we have learned to respectfully disagree with each other. My peers and I feel an inalienable sense of duty in Government and Politics, tied right into the themes of the class. We have learned to exercise our voice, to shape our own educational experience. The sense of efficacy given to us by the open atmosphere of the classroom has made for an incredible learning experience.

Despite budget cuts that threaten at the start of each semester, L---- has not ceased to provide an incredible learning environment. My high school years have been a phenomenal period of intellectual and personal growth, because my fellow classmates and I have always been pushed to work in equal cooperation with teachers and with each other. Our childlike curiosity has been nurtured at the same time that we have been pushed to grow into mature and responsible adults. At my high school, the adults are consciously and intentionally building a community based on mutual respect. After having spent four years here, I have internalized the values of my role models at school; my vision of a utopian community is one in which compassion marks every human interaction and honest and open communication is the norm. Haverford is it.

Undergraduate / Why I love psychology -Cornell supp [7]

My love affair with psychology started at a young age. I was all but eight years old; it was two years my elder, that book of black-and-white optical illusions. We met at a book fair, where I handed the cashier two crisp dollar bills, my soft and tender hands already reaching out for what I had decided was infinitely better than every other book underneath the gazebo's roof.

It was the most magical object in my house. In inclement weather, I invariably reached for the comfort of its pages. It was a great heavy book, the sort which you would expect to cost twenty dollars or more, not two. The cover's silver embossing that used to read "Now You See it, Now You Don't" now read "N w ou See t, ow You Do 't." But while the letters outside may have been fading, I only had eyes for the wonders which lay inside.

Pupils widening over the illustrations within, I marveled at Muller-Lyon lines. How was it possible that I had believed with such conviction that the line on top was longer than the line beneath it, but upon measuring them both, found them to be exactly the same length? If anything, I thought my own brain could be trusted to make a simple observation.

Ten years have passed since I first encountered those lines that confounded and confused me. I have since made a hundred thousand more erroneous judgments, many of which were followed by should-have-would-have-could-have statements tinged with hindsight bias. ("I knew I should have bought the dark chocolate instead of the milk chocolate." "I knew I should have waited for the M train instead of walking to the bus stop." "I knew I should have trusted my instincts; if I had just picked my favorite number, I would now be the sole winner of the California Super Five Lotto.")

There's no telling what makes my brain works the way it does, in part because psychology offers too many answers to ever sift through completely. The answers belong to over a dozen different schools of psychology, each providing plenty of food for thought. I like thinking, and I like the thought that for as many hours I spend picking apart the musings of Freud, Beck, or Rogers, I will never fully comprehend all there is to know, as psychology branches out to all other disciplines that somehow collide together to provide infinite answers for the most basic questions about human existence.

Being completed baffled by optical illusions is still a hobby of mine, but I now spend nights by indulging in the musings of Malcolm Gladwell and Carol Dweck. Reading about the workings of the human mind, I am in a state of flow, the same feeling artists have when they sweep a brush across a fresh canvas. It is the feeling of being stretched, mixed with a heady dose of utter and sheer contentment. Each time I grasp a new concept that answers ten other questions about life, I am elated. So until a credentialed scientist declares the meaning of human existence to be forty-two, indeed, my love for psychology continues unabated.

Undergraduate / Can you write a good essay without using a personal anecdote? [4]

I'm stuck on this topic:
Why are you drawn to the academic fields you indicated in the Anticipated Degree and Academic Interest questions above?

Generally, I've explained my answers with personal anecdotes, but the deadlines are drawing close and I am feeling completely uninspired. Anyhow, what do you think? Are anecdotes essential?

Undergraduate / What don't you know? [3]

The building was no more than three thousand square feet, both floors combined. Yet, each time she stepped into the library, my seven-year-old self was instantaneously overjoyed. The smell of books sent me into a kind of delirium, and for two hours each day, I immersed myself in the sentences stretching across each page. "How many pages would amount to how many miles of words?" I wondered. I planned to amass "a hundred bajillion miles" of knowledge. I strategized to read every book in the library, systematically going down the Dewey system. This was easily done with the bitty chapter books. The nonfiction proved to be a roadblock. Sliding my fingers against the satiny, gilded edges of the encyclopedias, I reveled in the idea that out there was a reserve of knowledge, more vast than my mind could ever comprehend.

At seventeen, I have still not learned everything there is to know in the universe, nor do I ever expect to. But I know I will always be learning, when I am twenty, forty, and ninety. As my knowledge expands, my questions, too, will accumulate. And thus, the paradox explained by David Byrne: "The more you know, the more you know you don't know." The lens through which I view the world will undoubtedly be widened by each gem, each piece of knowledge, I gain. But I fully expect that I will never know all that I don't know.

I hope the sentence fragment in the last paragraph is okay. Any thoughts are appreciated!

Undergraduate / Growing up with two religions [NEW]

San Francisco: a cultural mecca where religions coincide and ideas explode into being. Most of my friends and I are fortunate to have lived our entire lives here. But whereas many of my peers only experienced other cultures through the eyes of those with different backgrounds, my six-year-old self was lucky enough to have been immersed in two vastly different religions. By day, I was a diligent student at a Presbyterian Chinese school. At home, I was a Buddhist child, influenced by the Confucianism that tinged my parents' beliefs.

I can vividly recall the afternoons spent in the chapel at school. A lanky preacher stood on the dais, urging us to pray regularly and assuring us that God loved every child he had created. I sat in the pews, my face hidden among the hundreds. By no means did I feel special, but I absorbed the preacher's message all the same.

My parents had wanted me learn Cantonese, but never liked that I was subject to weekly sermons. A devout Buddhist, my mother continues to keep a calendar on the living room wall. The inauspicious days are circled with a bold red crayon; the days on which we light incense for ancestors are marked with pencil. Not a single April has passed without my family's observance of Qing Ming, a Chinese Buddhist tradition of honoring ancestors by visiting the cemetery.

At six, I prayed nightly, but I also remembered not to wash my hair on the days encircled in red. I sometimes wonder how two religions could have had equal influence on me, without causing me great confusion and frustration. What I've come to realize is that my exposure to both Presbyterianism and Buddhism has only had a positive impact.

At seventeen, it seems that the two religions have canceled each other out, as I practice neither today. But what remains of my religious experience is a readiness to embrace all ideas. In the San Franciscan tradition, I only see people- I see neither religion nor race. The light that illuminates each person is colored only by personal qualities. My favorite people are the kindest and quirkiest people I have ever met; they are Catholic, atheist, white, Syrian, Asian. Even as the Chinese characters I learned escape my memory one by one, I remain infinitely grateful for my early immersion in two completely different religions.

I'm 300 characters over (about 30-50 words). Any help on trimming would be much appreciated!