Stanford students possess an intellectual vitality. Reflect on an idea or experience that has been important to your intellectual development.
The difference between a raw egg and a cooked egg is that a cooked egg will never, ever hatch. Unfortunately, I learned that the hard way.
When I was five years old, I self-righteously decided to hatch my own egg because my mom refused to buy me a baby chick, the typical pet for children where I grew up. So, with a baby-blanket, a carton of eggs from my fridge and vague knowledge regarding egg incubation, I began my seemingly flawless plan. However, after three weeks, the chicks didn't come out. Initially, I blamed my baby-blanket for not being warm enough; only after I ended up with hard boiled eggs did I realize that my chicks were gone for good.
Over the years, I made several more attempts to hatch eggs, all of which failed epically. I finally had an "eurika!" moment in grade 11 biology when I learned about meiosis and reproduction and realized that grocery-store eggs were never fertilized. Since then, I had been interested in the way things grow. It's unfathomable how biological structures in nature that occurred by chance, is more advanced and perfected than man-made technology.
I finally concluded that not only was there something inherently wrong with my hatching abilities, it was my lack of scientific knowledge that lead to the failure of my hatching projects. Similarly, I understood that the true purpose of education was to equip students with knowledge and the ability to apply it to various areas of life. An egg, completed with its own air compartment and food supply, can turn into a fully functioning-and insanely adorable- organism just twenty-one days after fertilization. Like the chicken-egg paradox, knowledge cannot be fruitful unless it is fertilized by passion and curiosity, a student's innate urge to learn. Likewise, curiosity is also useless without knowledge; they coexist. I want to go to go to college to allow my intellectual curiosity to guide my learning.
In the end, I learned how to make hard-boiled eggs but never successfully hatched an egg. But why dwell on that? These days, I have reverted to growing mushrooms under my kitchen sink.
-want for chicken, curious about how it came out...description
What Matters to me and Why
There is a place in this world, a white, empty box, with no content nor boundaries. In this box, there's no one to walk to; no life flourishes here. A place so baron, callous and denuded that the only sound is the fizzle of brain cells dying. It is the human mind in the absence of motivation.
Now, don't get me wrong. I have only ever dissected a pig brain. I don't really know what the human mind looks like. What I do know, however, is that during parent teacher interviews last year, my english teacher questioned my mother very sternly, "Julia's enthusiasm lights up the whole room! Why does she never run out of energy?" And being me, I wasn't satisfied with just a rhetorical question. I set out to find the answer.
My family, for one, was always there for me, encouraging me whether it's when I spoke at the Canadian Business Hall of Fame, or when I performed my own piano composition in front of the whole school. Going to school also gives me energy. Obviously, I too have those days when learning the "gerondif" conjugation of the verb "savoir" seldom seems essential to the greater good of mankind. But, when my entire school gathers for "prayers" in the morning, and the collective melody of our voices circulate the field of green and gold uniforms, I get shivers that fuel my enthusiasm for the whole day. I also get very excited when I am working with Wallet Farm, a not-for-profit initiative I founded in order to use the concept "micro-enterprise supporting micro-enterprise". When the Wallet Farm community gathers and hand-make wallets to help developing communities halfway across the globe, I am motivated to continue making a difference.
Yet, it wasn't until I stumbled upon Herman Melville's quote " We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men." did I realize that my true motivation is my community. Whether it's my family, my school, or Wallet Farm, we are all interconnected by our care for one another. (elbows?)
I sincerely thank my community for shaping me into becoming who I am today, and for sparing my mind from being a baron boxes with the sound of brain cells dying.
because we are social creatures
-just because we don't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist: elbows that are rough
family community: not lonely, encouragement, support from others
