Undergraduate / 'the privilege of learning mathematics from my teacher ' - Making a difference Rice [4]

Prompt:The quality of Rice's academic life and the Residential College System are heavily influenced by the unique life experiences and cultural traditions each student brings. What perspective do you feel that you will contribute to life at Rice? (Most applicants are able to respond successfully in two to three double-spaced pages.)

I still remember it like it was yesterday. It was a cold winter night and I was the only one awake in my household mostly because everyone had gone to bed at 9 p.m. I was fiddling with my Rubik's cube trying to figure out the best way to go about making something meaningful for my favorite math teacher. I was her secret Santa.

I've had the privilege of learning mathematics from my teacher for 3 years. It actually would have been only two years but I chose to take her class because I just wanted her has my math teacher. Every time I walk into her room with a smile on my face, she always had a smile on her face waiting for me, and of course the rest of our class. She is just that type of person, always tranquil and always happy. The way she teaches is just absolutely phenomenal. Everyone says that the iPhone is the easiest cellular device on the planet to learn to use, well to put it bluntly, she is the iPhone of the mathematics world. She teaches so that everyone understands and she never leaves a student behind. She is charismatic. She is humorous. She is everything that a student would want in a teacher which is why I wanted to do something for her. She made a difference in my life by being just an awesome math teacher. I then just wanted to be an awesome student. I wanted to make a difference in her life.

So as the final end of the year NHS meeting rolled around, I knew who I was going to choose for my secret Santa. The good thing was that the NHS Officers were allowed to choose first who they wanted for their secret Santa but I was prepared to fight for my spot for Ms. Smith anyways.

Now we return to that night. The cold winter night. The night where everyone was asleep at 9 p.m. The night where I was racking my brain to figure out something that my teacher deserved. Her favorite drink was fresca. So why not get her some fresca? But then I thought that wouldn't be enough. Everything that she has done for me, and all I give her is some pop? No, her gift had to be something more befitting. And then it hit me. I love math. She loves math. So why not create a math problem for her one in which the end product would be my identity? And that's exactly what I did. I created an elaborate math problem containing derivatives, polynomial long division, statistics, integrals and all that jazz. I spent hours on it and I was particularly proud of it. The next morning I dropped it off to her room pretending that it was just a normal delivery from her mailbox. I waited for what felt like hours until I had her class that day. She showed our class what she had received, her pop and the math problem. She was so happy about the letter. She was going around the room showing everyone, saying how cool it was and how much she wanted to try and solve it but didn't have the time that day.

So the entire class voted to do the problem as the boardwork of the day. As we went through the problem, you would have been able to see the excitement well in her eyes. You could see the anticipation that was overflowing out of her body. And she didn't want her special problem to ever end. Eventually we solved the last problem and she received a six digit number, my six digit student ID number. But she didn't realize. She scratched her head nervously and looked at us in confusion. Had she made a mistake calculating the numbers? Nope, I made sure to check her work, after all it was my problem and I had it memorized. She just couldn't understand what the number meant. She tried to assign them to the alphabet, or check if the numbers spelled anything out using her cell phone. It was not until one of my classmate rang out "It's a student number!" that she checked her roster.

She went down the list of all of her classes until she reached mine. As she scrolled down, she saw it. She saw the number sitting gleefully next to my name. She practically burst into tears. She came over and hugged me, and then hugged me some more, telling us that it was the best gift that she'd ever received in her life. And I knew at that moment, that I had made a true difference in her life. That is my goal in life. To make a difference in people's lives no matter how minuscule it may be. That is what I would contribute to the Rice community. I will always strive to make a difference; I will always strive to initiate change for the better.

Any comments are appreciated, I think i may be too bland