hey!
below is my first draft for the common app essay. i have to send all materials in by next friday in order for my transcripts to be mailed in time, so please help ASAP!! honest feedback is greatly appreciated. thanks!
My dad handed me the painting for examination. It was an illustration of two hands reaching out to each other-small, simple, and seemingly insignificant. But upon closer examination, I began to notice the unusually great amount of attention paid to each curve and line of each hand, each fragile crevice and faint blue branch of the veins in each wrist. When my father told me that this was, in fact, my first oil-painting at eleven years old, it was then that I finally understood what he's always told me: ever since I was young, I've had a bizarrely strong sense of observation.
And while this unusually keen eye for detail has always helped me in my artistic pursuits, it was only until my freshman year that I began to realize its usefulness in school. Or more specifically, math. At the start of Algebra II, fractions with exponents taunted me with their seemingly impossible-to-define domains and ranges, and the complicated curves of quadratic functions twisted like evil snakes throughout the Euclidean plane. During my freshman year, feeling more frustrated than usual one night, I ignored the "No Calculator" note at the top of my math worksheet and graphed each quadratic equation onto my calculator. Feeling like quite the rebel, I diligently copied each graph onto the paper. But it wasn't long before I put the calculator down, noticing certain patterns in each equation and realizing that I could take what I had learned from the last graph to visualize the next one. Tackling my homework from an artistic standpoint, I began to envision where each vertex should peak, how steeply or gradually each graph should slope up or down, and where the curves should cross the x and y-axes. By merely replicating the subtle trends I detected from one graph and applying it to the next, I began to truly understand why each graph behaved as it did. And though others may see this as a backwards approach, for me, it was the first step in combining my artistic side with my academic one.
Since then, I've continued to use constant observation as a foundation for my mathematical endeavors. While my classmates next to me draw cotangent curves on graph paper and redraw them for every shift their equations require, I close my eyes for a moment and draw them in my head. In studying statistics, I examine the given data and visualize what type of distribution they would create before entering the numbers into my calculator, trying to estimate the least-squares regression line before I let technology derive it for me. Though this means I take a longer time to solve each problem, it is my way of ensuring I truly understand each concept I'm learning. And as math has become an artistic outlet for me, my fear of the subject has matured into an unexpectedly warm fascination for it.
Now with each year that passes, I'm beginning to realize that it is not enough to merely use my natural passion for art to fuel my love for math. While art encourages creativity and imagination, math seeks concrete answers that work. But both require exploration. Curiosity. Discovery. Both inspire me to approach life with a unique perspective, using the age-old value of observation to picture solutions to modern-day problems that arise as the world advances into the future. And thus, I hope that my admiration for the practicality of mathematical thinking will someday soon solve issues involved in public health or the economy, fueled by the desire to improve the world I so carefully observe each day. Or perhaps I'll put my enthrallment for numbers and data to use in statistical analysis of medical experiments, deriving the answers that could someday be used in treatments for diseases that plague people all over the world today. But regardless of whatever realm of everyday life I hope to someday influence, I'll always remember how art first fueled my ambition to succeed in math, two seemingly unrelated subjects reaching out to each other like the hands in my painting from so long ago.
It's a simple equation, with a twist.
p.s. its currently 688 words. is this too long? what can i cut out?
below is my first draft for the common app essay. i have to send all materials in by next friday in order for my transcripts to be mailed in time, so please help ASAP!! honest feedback is greatly appreciated. thanks!
My dad handed me the painting for examination. It was an illustration of two hands reaching out to each other-small, simple, and seemingly insignificant. But upon closer examination, I began to notice the unusually great amount of attention paid to each curve and line of each hand, each fragile crevice and faint blue branch of the veins in each wrist. When my father told me that this was, in fact, my first oil-painting at eleven years old, it was then that I finally understood what he's always told me: ever since I was young, I've had a bizarrely strong sense of observation.
And while this unusually keen eye for detail has always helped me in my artistic pursuits, it was only until my freshman year that I began to realize its usefulness in school. Or more specifically, math. At the start of Algebra II, fractions with exponents taunted me with their seemingly impossible-to-define domains and ranges, and the complicated curves of quadratic functions twisted like evil snakes throughout the Euclidean plane. During my freshman year, feeling more frustrated than usual one night, I ignored the "No Calculator" note at the top of my math worksheet and graphed each quadratic equation onto my calculator. Feeling like quite the rebel, I diligently copied each graph onto the paper. But it wasn't long before I put the calculator down, noticing certain patterns in each equation and realizing that I could take what I had learned from the last graph to visualize the next one. Tackling my homework from an artistic standpoint, I began to envision where each vertex should peak, how steeply or gradually each graph should slope up or down, and where the curves should cross the x and y-axes. By merely replicating the subtle trends I detected from one graph and applying it to the next, I began to truly understand why each graph behaved as it did. And though others may see this as a backwards approach, for me, it was the first step in combining my artistic side with my academic one.
Since then, I've continued to use constant observation as a foundation for my mathematical endeavors. While my classmates next to me draw cotangent curves on graph paper and redraw them for every shift their equations require, I close my eyes for a moment and draw them in my head. In studying statistics, I examine the given data and visualize what type of distribution they would create before entering the numbers into my calculator, trying to estimate the least-squares regression line before I let technology derive it for me. Though this means I take a longer time to solve each problem, it is my way of ensuring I truly understand each concept I'm learning. And as math has become an artistic outlet for me, my fear of the subject has matured into an unexpectedly warm fascination for it.
Now with each year that passes, I'm beginning to realize that it is not enough to merely use my natural passion for art to fuel my love for math. While art encourages creativity and imagination, math seeks concrete answers that work. But both require exploration. Curiosity. Discovery. Both inspire me to approach life with a unique perspective, using the age-old value of observation to picture solutions to modern-day problems that arise as the world advances into the future. And thus, I hope that my admiration for the practicality of mathematical thinking will someday soon solve issues involved in public health or the economy, fueled by the desire to improve the world I so carefully observe each day. Or perhaps I'll put my enthrallment for numbers and data to use in statistical analysis of medical experiments, deriving the answers that could someday be used in treatments for diseases that plague people all over the world today. But regardless of whatever realm of everyday life I hope to someday influence, I'll always remember how art first fueled my ambition to succeed in math, two seemingly unrelated subjects reaching out to each other like the hands in my painting from so long ago.
It's a simple equation, with a twist.
p.s. its currently 688 words. is this too long? what can i cut out?