Prompt: Beyond your impressive academic credentials and extra curricular accomplishments, what else makes you unique and colorful? We know nobody fits neatly into 500 words or less, but you can provide us with some suggestion of the type of person you are. Anything goes! Inspire us, impress us, or just make us laugh. Think of this optional opportunity as show and tell by proxy and with an attitude
For my seventh birthday, I asked for a trip to Russia. I still remember the look on my mother's face after those words left my mouth. She looked at me as if I was insane. As if I was a stranger she had never seen before. "Why on Earth would you want to go there?" My elementary school teacher that year had a map of the world that spread across the entirety of her back wall. As soon as I got to school each morning, I would drop my backpack at the front of the classroom and sprint to where the map was positioned. The world seemed so vast and I had never seen or heard of most of it. At the ripe age of seven, my biggest question was if you went to the bottom of the Earth, would you fall off? The same kind of question arose for if you went to the top of the Earth. I had developed this idea that if you went to the very top, gravity would not exist and you would float upwards, straight into space. This is why I wanted to go to Russia. I wanted to test my theory, like all good scientists want to do. I still hope to reach the top of the world, and the bottom of it, as a way to answer those questions that I posed just ten years ago, even though I know the answer to them in theory. These questions and that map sparked my subsequent interest in the world and its cultures, an interest that still exists today. In the eighth grade, I enrolled in my first year of French at my school. Today, I am in my fifth year and have reached a point of near fluency through my hard work and my pure love for learning languages. I have also taught myself how to speak Russian, with the help of a tutor and online tools. I am currently learning to speak Dutch, as I want to see myself fluent in as many of the world's languages as I possibly can. My ultimate goal is to experience the cultures that these languages represent in their entirety and gain a broader perspective through experience. I want to grow as a person and I am taking initiative to do that. With each language that I learn, and hopefully master, I aim to visit that country and use my knowledge of their language in a completely new way. I want to live the fullest life I possibly can and I see travelling and exploring the world as a way for me to accomplish that goal.
For my seventh birthday, I asked for a trip to Russia. I still remember the look on my mother's face after those words left my mouth. She looked at me as if I was insane. As if I was a stranger she had never seen before. "Why on Earth would you want to go there?" My elementary school teacher that year had a map of the world that spread across the entirety of her back wall. As soon as I got to school each morning, I would drop my backpack at the front of the classroom and sprint to where the map was positioned. The world seemed so vast and I had never seen or heard of most of it. At the ripe age of seven, my biggest question was if you went to the bottom of the Earth, would you fall off? The same kind of question arose for if you went to the top of the Earth. I had developed this idea that if you went to the very top, gravity would not exist and you would float upwards, straight into space. This is why I wanted to go to Russia. I wanted to test my theory, like all good scientists want to do. I still hope to reach the top of the world, and the bottom of it, as a way to answer those questions that I posed just ten years ago, even though I know the answer to them in theory. These questions and that map sparked my subsequent interest in the world and its cultures, an interest that still exists today. In the eighth grade, I enrolled in my first year of French at my school. Today, I am in my fifth year and have reached a point of near fluency through my hard work and my pure love for learning languages. I have also taught myself how to speak Russian, with the help of a tutor and online tools. I am currently learning to speak Dutch, as I want to see myself fluent in as many of the world's languages as I possibly can. My ultimate goal is to experience the cultures that these languages represent in their entirety and gain a broader perspective through experience. I want to grow as a person and I am taking initiative to do that. With each language that I learn, and hopefully master, I aim to visit that country and use my knowledge of their language in a completely new way. I want to live the fullest life I possibly can and I see travelling and exploring the world as a way for me to accomplish that goal.