CTYhuskerSaint
Oct 22, 2015
Undergraduate / Nerd Camp Changing my Life - PSU Undergrad Application [3]
Taking these recommendations and those from other people, I have rewritten the statement. Hopefully, it is an improvement on what I have written. Again, have at thee, folks ...
CTY is a program run by Johns Hopkins University that aims to "develop academically gifted individuals" by immersing qualified students in college-level material taught by top-notch college and high-school educators. CTY runs summer programming at several campuses across the world, and the summer after my freshman year, I went to Dickinson College to attend Russian History.
My first endeavor to Dickinson was meant to be a one-time-only dip into the vast sea of college, and spending three weeks solely focused on Russian History was a way to peek into the future before racing back towards comfort. Expecting a simple academic journey, I was completely unprepared for the non-academic things that I would experience and ultimately take to heart.
The first hint that CTY would not be what it appeared was my first roommate. He wore a glow-in-the-dark Iron Patriot mask and was a bigger history buff than I was. Soon, I met more people like us; enthusiasts of various nerdy things, and soon I fell in love with the CTY community. The top values within this community are inclusiveness and mutual respect rather than vanity and superficiality, and for people who are bullied for being in the wrong social group or having abnormal sexual orientations, CTY can sometimes be a literal lifesaver.
CTY quickly became my second home and safe haven. In a world where students are constantly compared and judged, I was able to thrive academically in a place where intelligence was not compared in fear of a class rank or a standardized test score. Instead, I developed my critical thinking skills in debates and simulations while improving my comprehension of college-level text in subjects such as Ethics, International Politics, and Russian History. Outside of class, I fit a school year of events into three weeks with inside jokes and memories that would last for the rest of the year until we met again.
This past summer, my membership to CTY came to a very teary and somber end. When I started my CTY journey, I expected a purely academic environment where I would learn about Peter the Great before I left to never touch the material again. However, I returned for two more sessions and learned snippets about utilitarianism and modern refugee crises. More importantly, I became less individually focused and learned to try to foster a community among my peers that is worth the effort making and the nostalgic pains leaving.
Taking these recommendations and those from other people, I have rewritten the statement. Hopefully, it is an improvement on what I have written. Again, have at thee, folks ...
CTY is a program run by Johns Hopkins University that aims to "develop academically gifted individuals" by immersing qualified students in college-level material taught by top-notch college and high-school educators. CTY runs summer programming at several campuses across the world, and the summer after my freshman year, I went to Dickinson College to attend Russian History.
My first endeavor to Dickinson was meant to be a one-time-only dip into the vast sea of college, and spending three weeks solely focused on Russian History was a way to peek into the future before racing back towards comfort. Expecting a simple academic journey, I was completely unprepared for the non-academic things that I would experience and ultimately take to heart.
The first hint that CTY would not be what it appeared was my first roommate. He wore a glow-in-the-dark Iron Patriot mask and was a bigger history buff than I was. Soon, I met more people like us; enthusiasts of various nerdy things, and soon I fell in love with the CTY community. The top values within this community are inclusiveness and mutual respect rather than vanity and superficiality, and for people who are bullied for being in the wrong social group or having abnormal sexual orientations, CTY can sometimes be a literal lifesaver.
CTY quickly became my second home and safe haven. In a world where students are constantly compared and judged, I was able to thrive academically in a place where intelligence was not compared in fear of a class rank or a standardized test score. Instead, I developed my critical thinking skills in debates and simulations while improving my comprehension of college-level text in subjects such as Ethics, International Politics, and Russian History. Outside of class, I fit a school year of events into three weeks with inside jokes and memories that would last for the rest of the year until we met again.
This past summer, my membership to CTY came to a very teary and somber end. When I started my CTY journey, I expected a purely academic environment where I would learn about Peter the Great before I left to never touch the material again. However, I returned for two more sessions and learned snippets about utilitarianism and modern refugee crises. More importantly, I became less individually focused and learned to try to foster a community among my peers that is worth the effort making and the nostalgic pains leaving.
