Undergraduate / Hedy Lamarr, the Actress and Inventor (Write about a person who influences you) [3]

Beauty and brains are often considered to be polar opposites in society. The stereotypical genius is a man with glasses and a calculator while the token beauty is a woman with curves and a smile that would bring a man to his knees. Women are somewhat cursed by their looks. They are either unattractive and ignored, average and well liked, or gorgeous and envied. Men are well liked for qualities unrelated to their physical appearance, though a handsome man does have some perks in life. Imagining a woman whom is both beauty and brains is easy enough. Finding the real thing is hard.

Hedy Lamarr was a Hollywood starlet in the 30s and 40s. She was considered "The Most Beautiful Woman in the World". Onscreen sex symbol with a giant secret. She was as brilliant as she was beautiful. Hedy befriended a composer named George Antheil and together they set out to patent their idea for "a secret communications system" to help the Allied forces win WWII.

Their device was a torpedo guidance system to make torpedoes more accurate and to cycle between 88 frequencies to discourage enemy detection and jamming. Though the patent was granted to Lamarr and Antheil, their invention was never put into production. Hedy felt discouraged and tried to join the National Inventors Council, NIC, but was told her time was better spent selling War Bonds. Her beauty was her downfall. Nobody took her intellect seriously and her invention was not rediscovered until the 60s.

Lamarr was not even acknowledged for her patent until after her death. She is now considered one of the famous inventors for her early work in "frequency hopping". The concept is still in use today in Bluetooth devices and WiFi connections. In fact, one could say her work was integral to today's technology.

Hedy Lamarr was a woman of many talents and I admire her for all she had to offer the world. She gives me a sense of pride in myself as I step into the male dominant field of engineering. I can look to her for the strength to pursue my ideas and push for them to be acknowledged by the rest of my peers. Hedy was tenacious and she taught me to be tenacious too.

Any and all help is appreciated!

Writing Feedback / Life Experience Essay on religious beliefs and how it effects my choices in friends [2]

I am a Roman Catholic. I went to Catholic school when I was a young girl and I still go to mass every Sunday. I have attended catechism classes in middle school so I could receive my confirmation. In catechism I was told to be wary of people who were practitioners of other religions; Jehovah's Witness, Atheists, Mormons, etc. This often lead to me having disagreements with other people when I went to public schools. I once had an argument with a close friend who was a Jehovah's Witness. I outright told her that her religion was wrong. We never spoke about religion again, although we remain friends to this day.

When I entered my public high school as a freshman I had only two friends I knew and was close with. They were both Catholic and were in youth group together. I was and still to this day a serious advocate of the Pro-Life cause. In October of freshman year I participated in the "National Day of Silence" at my school to raise awareness. Everyone participating in this event wore red duct tape with the word LIFE across their mouths. I also printed pamphlets explaining the protest. I offered the tape and the pamphlets to my Catholic friends and, to my surprise, they turned me down. One of them even criticized me about how stupid I was making myself look and that I was just going to bring myself trouble. On the "Nation Day of Silence" I spent the day being called names and laughed at by a lot of my peers. The next day I told my youth group about what had happened and they all agreed that I had brought it on myself.

I spent the next few days hiding inside myself as people continued to make fun of me. The protest had put a lot of unwanted attention on me. I was mortified at how cruel the student population was to my simple protest. What hurt even more was the total lack of support I received from my fellow Catholics. I felt like I'd been left out to dry.

Later I was introduced to a group of people through a mutual friend. They were a hodgepodge gathering of interesting kids at one of the outer lunch tables in the cafeteria. Also, none of them were Catholic. The bulk of them were atheist or protestant. I told them what had happened to me and they were all outraged by the treatment I had been getting. I ended up becoming very close to these people. This experience helped open my eyes to the fact that true friends are not some things you can choose by religion. Religion may be what we all believe in but who we are as a person is shown through our actions and how far we are willing to go to protect those we care about.

Please give me feedback on my word choices, paragraph structure, and what will help me add a bit more flow to my essay.