Undergraduate / I'm excited to be living with you/ Stanford / letter to roommate! [3]

Virtually all of Stanford's undergraduates live on campus. Write a note to your future roommate that reveals something about you or that will help your roommate - and us - know you better.

Since it looks like we'll be living together, we'll get to know a lot about each other! Well, let me start by saying I'm excited to be living with you. While living at boarding school and in the matter of just one year, I had the experience and opportunity to live with a total of 5 different roommates, so hopefully I've learned a lot from them and will be a good roommate. One characteristic about me that you may notice is I can be very random.

My friends, happiness, and pink are very important to me. I love being surrounded by my friends, and I can be found with my closest friends most of the time. Two things I love, and may talk a lot about, are math and Disney. Math is something that I believe is beautiful and grasps my interest like nothing else. I often find myself talking about math or doing math for pure enjoyment. My favorite Disney movies are the Disney Princess ones, and I love the happy endings that Disney portrays. I also enjoy, while not doing homework, doing puzzles for fun. I have over ten Disney Princess puzzles that may serve as decoration for our room. I am very sporadic and my actions today may not reflect how I'm acting tomorrow. Currently, I believe I am a princess, however tomorrow I may believe something completely different. I like to believe I keep the lives of the people I'm around interesting. I enjoy helping others whenever possible, whether it involves me being just a set of ears to listen or helping them with homework. I spend a lot of time in places like the library to study and while I'm not studying or sleeping, I am usually with my friends or out trying to find opportunity to help others, and am therefore rarely in the room.

I hope this gave you a taste of who you'll be rooming with, that we will have a blast as roommates, and we'll get to know each other better over time.

Undergraduate / Me Vs My sister; Stanford Supp/ Intellectual vitality [7]

Me Vs My sister; Stanford Supp/ Intellectual vitality

I know I already posted the first essay but here it is revised. also I'm not a very good writer so please help!

Stanford students possess an intellectual vitality. Reflect on an idea or experience that has been important to your intellectual development.

I grew up having a smart older sister, Leisha. I was always compared to her and seemed to always fall behind, leaving me feeling like a disappointment to my family. In middle school, she brought home impressive report cards with consecutive As while I brought home faulty Bs. While she was gifted, I never was. It seemed I always failed to be as smart as her.

Eighth grade, after being chosen for my middle school's student of the year, I finally felt I had done something better than my sister. I came home from school one day that year, and while planning classes for high school with my father, I brought up the idea to possibly take Geometry and Algebra II simultaneously as a sophomore. His response to me was, "You're not smart enough for that, or good at math." Little did we know at the time, that not only would I take these classes, but I would succeed in these and many more math classes. Never being as good as my sister and this comment gave me motivation to work extra hard to do my best, prove that I was smarter than Leisha, and that my parents were wrong.

Taking Algebra II and Geometry concurrently helped me realize my potential in math, so I had decided to apply to the Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts (LSMSA). Once I took my placement tests at LSMSA, I was told I scored high enough to take trigonometry and pre-calculus simultaneously as a junior. I took these classes and have continued my math education by taking a calculus sequence up to Calculus III, a statistics class, as well as classes such as Chaos Theory, Topology, Linear Algebra, and Differential Equations. Had I given up in eighth grade and accepted that I was not good enough, I would not be where I am today, knowing my strengths and passion for math.

here's the second essay:

What matters to you, and why?

T'was the night before Christmas, and my family and I were enjoying time together. We were getting prepared for the annual Christmas Eve church service, finishing preparing the dishes to be eaten Christmas day. Us kids are helping our dad make the family-tradition, generation passed barbeque for dinner and preparing tea rings for breakfast Christmas morning. After church, we drive through town, playing Christmas music and looking in awe at the lights. Once we return home, we gather round the fire, read "The Littlest Angel" by Charles Tazewell, followed by watching the classic movies "White Christmas" and "Miracle on 34th Street" before going to bed waiting for Santa's arrival.

Christmas is a very important time of year to me, not only with my beliefs but with my family. There is joy in the air and quality time is being spent with the family. The traditions which have been passed through generations in my family are very important to me. While living away from home the past two years and being at boarding school, these traditions have become even more important to me. My life is hectic and busy with schoolwork, friends, and the normal teenager life, however I enjoy the continuity of these traditions and something I can count on never changing as the years change. My family's traditions provide a special, happy memory we can always count on, is a way to remember the people of the family, and bring us closer together, which I hope to one day pass down.

Thanks!