Undergraduate / 'Basketball and learning Arabic' - The last two summers - Princeton [5]

From the activities I pursued during my last two summers, my intention was to better myself in mentality and physicality because I wanted to excel in athletics and academics in my junior and senior year. From how my summer happened, this isn't a tale of overcoming weakness and attaining success. It was more than that.

As I woke up every morning, I went to the basketball court near my school to improve my speed, accuracy on shooting, and critical strategies against a player's defense and offense. At the end of each practice, sweat climbed down my forehead no matter how many times I wiped it and I felt intense heat in my feet from a lack of ventilation due to tightly tied shoes. But with all the discomfort came versatility. As I go to the gym each night, many of my peers were impressed on how I could combat any difficult situation in a basketball game. I was able to defend a player who had a hundred pounds and six inches on me and I was quick enough to stop any player on a fast break. From the amount of practice I dedicated to basketball, I not only improved myself a basketball player, but I competed with higher caliber players. I wasn't attaining my full potential, but increasing the limit of my capabilities in basketball.

Aside from basketball, I gave myself a challenge during my summer: learn the most difficult language which was Arabic. As a stranger to the language, I had trouble pronouncing the letters and I let the frustration get the better of myself. However, a strange moment of epiphany came to me. As I was learning how to speak the language, I was listening to a couple of tracks from a Hip-Hop genre. I began to notice how I spoke Arabic followed the beats of the tracks. From the peculiar trait I noticed, I developed my enjoyment for the linguistic rhythm of Arabic. I came to appreciate Arabic as a beautiful language of poetry when spoken with emphasis on certain words. Have I mastered the language yet? No, but somehow I managed to memorize curses in Arabic.

Tell me what you think and if you're impressed.

Undergraduate / Thomas Sowell Reader - Columbia Supplement - 3 short essays [6]

Please tell us what you found meaningful about one of the above mentioned books, publications or cultural events.

The Thomas Sowell Reader reveals fascinating perspectives on many concepts that I now look differently at such as an education today being too dangerously liberal. But one perspective that interests me most is his view on welfare. In a welfare state, citizens are livestock that is fed by the government through the taxpayer's money. The welfare policies that the government produces reduce the citizen's incentive to work because through unemployment, they're guaranteed food stamps and welfare checks to live. They become veal.

I realized he is saying more than his text. When someone is given something without effort, he'll hold it with low marginal utility. With everything given with no effort in return, the incentive to confront adversity decreases. In the end, everyone in a welfare state will become couch potatoes.

For applicants to Columbia College, please tell us what attracts you specifically to the field or fields of study that you noted in the Application Data section.

My fascination of biology is sustained by one concept, how is life structured? In daily life, everyone bends their muscles, get colds, ages, and etc., but how? Biology and its many fields are the answers to the question, but the important question to ask is why do I want to know how? I want to know how life is structured because once the structure is known, it can be manipulated to yield new intentions. To clarify, HIV virus can resist drugs and medication by mutating which is why many medications work temporarily before the mutation occurs, but if one can understand the mutation patterns of the HIV virus, then progress is made. With patterns, medication against the HIV can be more effective and longer termed as the next mutation can be predicted and countered against by drug control. Just by understanding the structure of life, it can be manipulated to yield desired intentions.

Please tell us what you find most appealing about Columbia and why.

Columbia appeals to me because it nurtures a doctrine that I strongly believe in: How one sees will impact how one succeeds. While reading a Columbia student's blog, I was interested by what the student had to say about the university's core curriculum. He read The Wealth of Nations through an economist lens in one of his engineering classes and read it again through the lens of moral and political thought in Contemporary Civilization. He later replied that this core curriculum gave him a unique perspective that he could only find at Columbia University.

I'm fascinated by how Columbia puts a high emphasis on perspective in its core curriculum because I hold perspective with high marginal utility. I want to gain an education that gives me the most insightful viewpoint of the world around me so I can utilize it to further myself toward progress while still pursuing my aspiration for molecular biology and Columbia is the university that offers this in a nice package.

Tell me what you think about the essays. Does it impress you or is there room for improve. Be critical as possible.
I'll return the favor and give your essay a read. Just tell me which one you want me to focus on more.