Scholarship / Weissman Scholars - A very important scholarship essay. [3]

Please give me a hand everyone. I'll appreciate every support you give me.

The prompt: As you are well aware, Weissman Scholars are provided with additional resources to achieve their greatest educational, philanthropic, and/or global aspirations. Given the features of the Weissman Scholarship Experience-intellectual inquiry, mentoring and networking, extraordinary internships, entrepreneurial spirit, global citizenship, and leadership and teamwork-please tell us about a passion of yours and how you would develop it through the Weissman program.

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It was a crystal clear summer night, and we were enjoying a light breeze in the air and the smell of freshly cut grass. Palm trees rustled as the crickets sang. While talking about future plans with my best friend Jihoon, I was inundated with a mixture of excitement and anxiety about living 5,000 miles away from home. Suddenly, Jihoon broke down in tears. I have never seen a friend cry so desperately.

Now, almost four years later, the same frustration remains inside Jihoon.

Having played soccer for more than ten years, Jihoon dreamed of being a national soccer player. However, the oppressive, one-track style of Korean education completely hindered his dream: it made his parents believe that studying was the only way to succeed. Hence, Jihoon's parents rejected the offers made to Jihoon by the few high schools in Korea that actually had soccer programs, while spending thousands of dollars to send him to test preparation institutions. Since then, Jihoon had been trapped on this one track, unable to pursue his passion.

Like Jihoon, many Korean students appreciate the academic opportunities they receive, but they also feel forced to abandon their personal ambitions. While some may praise this academic performance of Korean students, many are not aware of the reality of education in my country. The current Korean government maintains an educational method which limits the potential of its brightest students. When students are left with no choice but to sit at a desk for more than ten hours a day at school and study more in academic institutes until two in the morning every day, there is little motivation and opportunity for students to pursue, or even discover, their own dreams.

My own educational experiences in various places, as well as countless lessons from my recent internship and stories of my friends, have cultivated my passion for reforming education in my country. After studying in England and France for two months at the age of 12, I was shocked to see so many students looking forward to going to school every day. Through the distinct contrast, I began to see a dark perspective on Korean education. This gloomy reality gave me a vision: to allow students to strive for their goals by balancing requirements with the pursuit of other non-academic dreams. From myriads of tutoring experiences that I have received and given, in both Korea and America, I learned that the best way to educate is to immerse students in appealing subjects, thus motivating them to probe into the material on their own. Considering that students do better in what they like, I believe education should be something engaging and empowering, not painful and dull.

From the beginning of my seventh grade year, I tried to put this small ambition into practice by requesting a number of solutions and suggestions from the Korean Minster of Education, as a member of KEDI (Korean Educational Development Institute) and KICE (Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation). Nevertheless, after observing the intransigence of the Korean government, I realized that I needed to proceed further on my dream in a bigger world. After attending an American high school for four years, I now understand Jihoon's desperate tears.

The years of experiences in America integrated my educational interest into larger passion. A number of advantages and drawbacks of American education led me to establish the online organization KOBE (Korean Organization for Better Education), sharing and listening to ideas for educational development of Korea. Consequently, with great fascination in Korean government, I obtained an internship opportunity at the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea in the summer of 2009. Although my role initially consisted of running such errands as organizing documents and answering phones, my responsibilities eventually included preparing for various hearings, writing political documents and taking care of voter requests. One of the most remarkable experiences was to cooperate with other staff members and congressmen in the Assembly. After discovering the dry, structured setting of the congressional office, I became the first icebreaker of hierarchical formality and stiffness between congressmen and staff members. I learned how a cheerful and amiable character can work as a welcome addition to any challenging environment.

Nowadays, numerous people abuse education as a way to merely become wealthy. Ubiquitous academic institutes, such as exam preparation academies demand students and parents to spend huge amounts of money, encouraging the extreme materialism of education. It is my goal to enable students to attain academic requirements without having to spend exorbitant amounts of money, while pursuing their non-academic dreams. Majoring in entrepreneurship does not mean that I desire to be a multi-millionaire. Rather, I wish to attain real-world experiences as an entrepreneur to observe how to utilize business as a model to promote a proper approach to education.

A successful entrepreneur is one who pioneers a significant change in an organization, unafraid to undertake any risks. Working at a school as a teacher can provide immediate assistance to individual students. While this is admirable, I long to do so on a larger scale. I will develop what I will learn and experience at Babson and beyond, through the support of the Weissman Scholarship Program, as a catalyst for more prominent, global accomplishments. I believe that we should be the beneficiaries of a broad education, not the victims of myopia.

Undergraduate / Lesson learned from my ankle injury - 'nothing was missing from my experience' [8]

Hello!
I am plannng to submit this essay for my common app.
I spent a lot of time on this and thus, I'd like to know how you guys think of this. I will appreciate all of your comments & critiques. Thank you!

Prompt:

A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community, or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you.

"Now, watch." She began to stuff the plastic cup with paper towels. I watched silently, wondering at her demonstration, as the cup bulged out until it looked like a deformed egg of a giant bird, a crumpled white mess. The nurse poked the cup with a pen from above once or twice, then more forcefully. Crack. The cup gave in, shattering and spraying its pieces everywhere. The nurse looked into my eyes. "And this was your life."

Yes, that was my life.

Anyone who had taken a glance at my high school life would say nothing was missing from my experience, not a single opportunity. I was participating in varsity football, speech team, choir, mock trial, student government, the Catholic youth group, and robotics team, to name a few. And yes, all at once. My résumé was so full and rich, gilded with the pride of my quasi-omnipotence and overflowed with the glory of my countless achievements. Such was my misguided self-importance, my leviathan pride.

Yet my life, in fact, was not exactly as glamorous or complete as my résumé. What did I lack? I thought I should fill my emptiness by achieving no less than thousand things at once. A brilliant idea: the less time to worry about my time, the less worry about my time. With this "remedy" and my joy of impressing people with the sheer number of achievements, I thought I could overcome my existential anxiety. Oh, yes, why couldn't have Sartre and Camus thought about that.

But eventually, I had to face my anxiety for what I could not achieve. I was always dissatisfied by day and exhausted by night. I continued to struggle my way through, yet I didn't realize what I truly lacked: the sense of direction. The pressure was building up, and my life was about to explode. All it needed was a little nudge.

The pen that shattered my cup was an injury at a football game. A broken ankle means different things to different people: severe pain, an excuse not to go to school, or the stink from the three-month unwashed foot. To me, it meant the inability to continue those myriad activities I was participating or planning to participate in. I panicked. While waiting for surgery, I could not help but to tell the nurse about my anxious anticipation that I could not continue the myriads of activities. And she showed me, with a cup and a pen, what my life then was really about.

After breaking out of my former life, as a chick does after breaking out of an egg, I did not know what to follow. How could I suddenly give up all my achievements? But the months of inability sifted my obsession into finer grains of interest; I finally realized that I had passion for a few activities, such as speech club, journalism, and choir, even after taking hiatus. After my ankle healed, I returned to those activities and only those. Knowing my passion, I could finally enjoy my activities, and consequently, my life.

Now, as I gather my records for college admission, I give a glance at my résumé and cannot help but smile with a sense of irony. My vanity has surely decorated my records. But thanks to the nurse, now I know that those two dozen lines mean something less than my truer self. I have more to offer than my ability to do forty thousand things at once and complain about myself; I know where my passion lies.