Undergraduate / "a rational thinker" - Biographical Essay. [5]

We are interested in leaning more about you and the context in which you have grown up, formed your aspirations and accomplished your academic successes. Please describe the factors and challenges that have most shaped your personal life and aspirations. How have these factors caused you to grow?

Thanks for the help in advance.

Throughout my entire life, I have been a rational thinker. Answers had to make sense and be supportable through logic for me to understand it. For these reasons I have always excelled in math and found science difficult because answers to not always make sense. So why have I suddenly shifted coordinates and am targeting an engineering career? I like to think it is by way of logic.

I started enjoying games and puzzles at a very young age. Before I had even started my school career I could be found at home completing a puzzle with many pieces, which were so small it was questionable whether or not I have them, due to fear of swallowing. My family members were impressed at how fast I could finish these puzzles as well. My grandma commented, "A keen eye as to how things shape together." It was evident early on I would be successful at activities like this.

When I entered school, problems like this continued to be solved with ease. I flew through multiplication tables, could solve difficult logic problems and excelled at timed problem solving. At the age of six I received my first chess set. My father and learned the game together and our first game ended with a landslide victory favoring myself. Despite all of this success, I soon found my nemesis, science. Science proved to defy everything I had learned before by presenting an answer that was not understandable and defied the norm. When math gave me answers, science gave me questions; questions whose answers were even more questions. I despised science because there was no end.

As I progressed in school I learned to love math more and hate science to the same degree. These love and hate relationships continued all the way to my first years of high school when I took algebra and a physics type class. My physics class explored the scientific process and discussed the ideas of experimentation and theory. At this point I finally began to feel science had a place within me. That was until the sudden death of a family member. During my freshman year, my great-uncle went into a coma and was kept alive with a machine. I cursed science for being so slow and for not having an answer to how to bring him back. I couldn't comprehend how easily the machine kept him alive, but how the doctors had no way of waking him up from his coma. When he was determined brain dead, I had decided that science was evil. There to make it appear like progress was occurring, when results were still far from sight. I was convinced I would hate science classes forever. I soon found out this would not be the case.

In my junior year I took a chemistry class that changed my perspective on science. The class taught me that in some sciences there are proven answers, ones that make sense and can be found through calculations. Overjoyed by balancing equations, stoichiometry, organic chemistry and more I was finally proud to be called a science nerd. By the time the class ended I wanted more; I couldn't pass up AP Chemistry and now I am even looking to take this science and turn it into a career. I looked onward towards that perfect career and stumbled upon chemical and biochemical engineering. I couldn't help but ask myself, "could this be the right job for me?" I still have not answered that question; however, I shouldn't yet; science has unanswered questions, so why not this one too. It seems logical that I do something that makes me think, but has proven results with correct answers. It seems logical that I do something I enjoy, while improving our society. It seems logical that I hate the indecisiveness of science and that I long to find answers. It seems logical that my goal is to study a science.

Undergraduate / "being the outsider" - Essay about diversity [3]

Hi, I would love help with my essay. It's due today so please help quickly.
Here's the prompt:
A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given you background, please describe an experiences that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community, or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you.

Before high school I always thought of myself as one of the popular kids. I would get invited to parties, go to the movies every week and rarely found myself without something to do. However, when I entered high school I seemed to take a 180 degree turn. No longer the popular kid I had to find somewhere in high school I could fit in. I meandered from clique to clique, never quite finding the one that fit for me. By way of this jumping from group to group I have discovered myself in a clique of my own, the everything clique.

During high school I have become good friends with my soccer teamates, choir and band students, intellectual minds, and nearly every other spectrum of the high school student body. Yet still, no particular group of people welcomes me with open arms. I've always wondered why I can't have a group to call my own, hang out with every week and have no worries in the world. In recent years I've come to the conclusion that I'm just different and that's the way it should be.

During lunch is when I find my dilemma hardest for me. I generally sit with my teamates. Twelve guys cram around a table that normally fits eight, with the last couple there eating on the outskirts with food in their laps. Multiple times I have been this last person. On the outskirts of conversation, I'm forced to sit there alone and eat my food in quiet. Reluctant to this, I'll sometimes eat with the intellectual kids, the students who recieved perfect ACT and SAT scores and who will undoubtedly go to the top colleges. Conversations here are more interesting, even when they have nothing to to with school. One conversation I found myself in was which movie is better, Inception or Slumdog Millionaire; Inception got the unanimous nod. However, there are those days when the intellectuals do proofs for fun and deprived of rest already, I avoid the extra work days. So my final choice is to sit cross-legged on the ground outside, enjoying the sun and munch with the fine arts kids. Musically declined myself, I don't always relate with what they are discussing, but I appreciate their hard work and dedication to nailing the money notes that make performances spectacular. Conversations will often discuss favorite songs or the up-and-coming artist that few know about. Unfortunately, they too have their days where practice comes before conversation and I am left out.

While I am not overjoyed being the outsider, I do not curse at it either. The outsider is the one who can bring spontaneity to the group. When I go to college, I hope I do not conform to the system and join a particular group, but hope to find others like me: the athlete with a limp, the nerd with a broken calculator, or the singer with a flat note.