Undergraduate / uMich supplemental essay #2 ; I want to be free to ask questions. [4]

I need a review ASAP since the deadline is tomorrow. The prompt is "Describe the unique qualities that attract you to the specific undergraduate College or School (including preferred admission and dual degree programs) to which you are applying at the University of Michigan. How would that curriculum support your interests?"

When I was in grade 9 I had a chemistry teacher who had the kind of personality that somehow forced even the most unruly students into a quiet reverie. During his lectures, the only time a student would interrupt would be to ask questions. However, even this privilege was all but lost when a student asked him a really naive question.

I still remember the teacher's bulging eyes and red face as he heard the question and started a tirade against the 'stupidity' of the student and stupid questions in general. I have always had a fascination with asking questions but I never thought that a student could be yelled at for asking one however naive it may be. For the first time, I realized what it meant to fear asking questions.

While I may have backed down several times from lifting my hand during the chemistry teacher's classes, I never lost my inquisitive nature. I created my own Facebook Page specifically to post the naive questions I encounter while pondering about nature. The color of the skies, the flow of water from a faucet, the movement of wings etc. provide me with intriguing questions that are humble and yet have answers that can only be arrived at through scientific endeavor. In the University of Michigan I am sure I will not only be as free to ask simple questions as I am on my Facebook page but I will also be able to carry out the scientific inquiry required to answer these questions.

I want to use the wide variety of experimental and theoretical research programs open to undergraduate students in Physics to answer the abundant questions I have about the physical world. I want to go on field trips as an Earth and environmental sciences major and experience the exhilaration of applying my scientific knowledge on real world settings as well as increase my spectrum of questions. I want to develop the unique chemical perspective of life that an uMich major in biochemistry will provide and be able to ask questions that I am not able to think of now. I want to Go Blue.

Undergraduate / University of Michigan supplemental essay #1; Community of dedicated volunteers. [2]

What do you guys think of my umich supplemental essay #1?

Essay #1 Everyone belongs to many different communities and/or groups defined by (among other things) shared geography, religion, ethnicity, income, cuisine, interest, race, ideology, or intellectual heritage. Choose one of the communities to which you belong, and describe that community and your place within it.

Commuting by rickshaw one day I saw a woman in rags squatting in front of a drainage channel. Everything about her looked ancient: her white hair, her wrinkled and dusty face, her rags which looked like it had stopped being a sari decades ago. Then I saw her hands and a mixture of disgust, pity and distress swept over me. The woman was washing her hands with black drainage water. This was not normal even in a country where beggars lined bus stands and footbridges everyday. Slum dwellers and beggars used these drains as makeshift toilets and pedestrians used them as spit basins. The woman was suffering from poverty of a magnitude I couldn't even have imagined before. This experience instilled in me a burning desire to do whatever I could to prevent the underprivileged from descending into such a sorry state. So when a friend proposed that we start a charity I was fully on board.

The seven of us who were the founding members shared an insatiable desire to help the underprivileged. We had all seen our fair share of indigent people and we all wanted to do something for them. I fondly remember the days we spent preparing for our first winter clothes distribution project. It was the first time that I was part of a community of dedicated volunteers. The willingness to do something for society without any expectation of reward warmed my heart and I felt that I belonged here more than anywhere else.

I need a non-asian perspective on this if possible since it contains several imagery that only asians might be familiar with.

Undergraduate / Poverty in a third world country is not kind to anyone; Background/ Central to Identity [9]

What do you guys think of my essay answering the prompt "Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story." Does it show that I like making my own path in life?

I'm at my starting point. I have already walked ten times round my room and parts of my left arm feel rough from brushing a few times against the two chairs in my room. I stop for a brief moment and change to an anti-clockwise direction. Although I revolve my room at four times per minute, my mind moves at Mach speed. I'm now capable of a depth of concentration that is normally denied to my fickle mind.

I summon memories orderly, starting from my childhood. As I move along my timeline I hit upon the time when my father was unemployed for a long stretch of time for the first time. This was the time that I first experienced borderline poverty and the impression that this 'riches to rags' experience had on me was an unfavorable one. For a long time I had no qualms about losing tennis balls (with which I played cricket at the time) every other day but in an instant this changed and I had to make sure I didn't lose any tennis balls for at least a week or I couldn't play cricket for the rest of the week. My mother had to scramble to find jobs at private clinics to make ends meet. While my mother's health suffered due to a lack of free time, I suffered from social isolation and bad grades. Poverty in a third world country is not kind to anyone. However, even a rock couldn't have kept me down forever. At one point I realized that brooding over my father's unemployment would not get me results and I took control of my life. I started experimenting with my social interactions and my studies. When others would talk to me I would smile and compare its effects with those of a neutral expression. In studies, I experimented with memorization and learning by heart and found that the latter had always suited me better. I could finish in a few hours what would take a few days to memorize. While my social life has improved gradually, my grades rose drastically. I shocked my naysayer teachers by getting 8 As on my O'levels after getting lower than average marks in 9th grade, the year before. My life has been on an uphill climb ever since and even setbacks like an emigration before I started the 12th grade only motivates me to make the best use of my time.

I sit down on my bed tired after walking round and round for so long. While my legs rest, my mind soars. The endless possibilities I have created with my own hands are spread before me. I wouldn't exchange my experience of overcoming poverty for any other.