roysar
Aug 10, 2014
Undergraduate / "Golden Spiral" - challenge a belief or idea [2]
Hi guys this is my tentative commonapp essay that still needs a lot of work, would you mind please reviewing over it and making some corrections? I would be ever so grateful :) Thanks!
Question: Reflect on a time when you challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again?
Our planet, which may be like no other, harbors billions, if not trillions of species of flora and fauna. And beneath the surface, something even more fascinating, known as the Golden Spiral emerges. It is a mathematical curve that appears countless times in nature, such as in shells, flowers, human faces, and even in the shape of the Milky Way galaxy. It is simply one of the many instances in which math underlies reality, and it is genuinely marvelous.
Until the ninth grade, I was just another student: normal, without any particular passion. The only thing that kept me kicking was my competitiveness. It kept me at the top of my grade, taking the toughest classes and getting the best grades. In ninth grade, I joined the high school Math Honor Society, through which I participated in local math competitions, which at first I didn't find interesting and didn't prepare for. The first competition that I studied for was the AMC 10A. I scoured the web for past exams, and I did the questions on each one of them, finding myself drawn to the challenge of solving problems that at first seemed impossible. It became exciting to find the contrived solutions to these problems, and the feeling of elation that I derived from the "ah!" moment of discovering the inner workings of a difficult problem was unmatched. Finally, there was something that challenged my intellect, something that wasn't mind-numbing computations from my Algebra class at school, something that challenged me to understand math at a deeper level. That year, a friend recommended me to buy a series of books called The Art of Problem Solving and join FLSAM (Florida Students' Association of Mathematics). Once the books arrived, I began with Introduction to Number Theory, doing all of the problem sets from each chapter, combing through every section. After 3 months of studying, I was chosen to be a part of the Florida ARML (American Legions Math League) team through FLSAM for 2012, which came as a complete surprise to me. 4 months before, I'd known nothing about the world of math, and here I was, basking in the glory of such an achievement. But even more importantly, I affirmed that I am a thinker, someone who isn't going to drift through life accepting everything at face-value with blind belief.
This has recently led me to a particularly dicey subject, challenging one of the core beliefs upon which I had been raised. My parents have strong beliefs about God, and I had to understand that more deeply. I took my plight to the web, reading articles and blogs and watching videos of important modern thinkers. Although I hadn't come to a concrete conclusion, some of the opinions that were forming in in my mind gravely conflicted with what my parents were saying. I sat down with them in a five hour long discussion that was sometimes emotional and sometimes intellectual as I submitted to them what I had found on the internet. To my parents' credit they had brought me up with enough love that I was not worried about any major consequences to my actions. And to this day, this is a mystery that I have not yet solved, a seemingly relentless maze of which I cannot find an exit.
Life's goal for me is to be making these same decisions over and over again, to achieve a more extensive understanding of anything that I do, to contest whichever beliefs I might not understand completely, and at a mathematical level, to see the great patterns that may exist in nature. It is important that I keep searching, because I believe that everything has its own fitting Golden Spiral.
Hi guys this is my tentative commonapp essay that still needs a lot of work, would you mind please reviewing over it and making some corrections? I would be ever so grateful :) Thanks!
Question: Reflect on a time when you challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again?
Our planet, which may be like no other, harbors billions, if not trillions of species of flora and fauna. And beneath the surface, something even more fascinating, known as the Golden Spiral emerges. It is a mathematical curve that appears countless times in nature, such as in shells, flowers, human faces, and even in the shape of the Milky Way galaxy. It is simply one of the many instances in which math underlies reality, and it is genuinely marvelous.
Until the ninth grade, I was just another student: normal, without any particular passion. The only thing that kept me kicking was my competitiveness. It kept me at the top of my grade, taking the toughest classes and getting the best grades. In ninth grade, I joined the high school Math Honor Society, through which I participated in local math competitions, which at first I didn't find interesting and didn't prepare for. The first competition that I studied for was the AMC 10A. I scoured the web for past exams, and I did the questions on each one of them, finding myself drawn to the challenge of solving problems that at first seemed impossible. It became exciting to find the contrived solutions to these problems, and the feeling of elation that I derived from the "ah!" moment of discovering the inner workings of a difficult problem was unmatched. Finally, there was something that challenged my intellect, something that wasn't mind-numbing computations from my Algebra class at school, something that challenged me to understand math at a deeper level. That year, a friend recommended me to buy a series of books called The Art of Problem Solving and join FLSAM (Florida Students' Association of Mathematics). Once the books arrived, I began with Introduction to Number Theory, doing all of the problem sets from each chapter, combing through every section. After 3 months of studying, I was chosen to be a part of the Florida ARML (American Legions Math League) team through FLSAM for 2012, which came as a complete surprise to me. 4 months before, I'd known nothing about the world of math, and here I was, basking in the glory of such an achievement. But even more importantly, I affirmed that I am a thinker, someone who isn't going to drift through life accepting everything at face-value with blind belief.
This has recently led me to a particularly dicey subject, challenging one of the core beliefs upon which I had been raised. My parents have strong beliefs about God, and I had to understand that more deeply. I took my plight to the web, reading articles and blogs and watching videos of important modern thinkers. Although I hadn't come to a concrete conclusion, some of the opinions that were forming in in my mind gravely conflicted with what my parents were saying. I sat down with them in a five hour long discussion that was sometimes emotional and sometimes intellectual as I submitted to them what I had found on the internet. To my parents' credit they had brought me up with enough love that I was not worried about any major consequences to my actions. And to this day, this is a mystery that I have not yet solved, a seemingly relentless maze of which I cannot find an exit.
Life's goal for me is to be making these same decisions over and over again, to achieve a more extensive understanding of anything that I do, to contest whichever beliefs I might not understand completely, and at a mathematical level, to see the great patterns that may exist in nature. It is important that I keep searching, because I believe that everything has its own fitting Golden Spiral.
