1. In this second essay, please reflect on something you would like us to know about you that we might not learn from the rest of your application-or on something that you would like to say more about.
When I was 9 years old, my father asked me if I would like to spend my summer in Italy. At the time, I thought it was joke (and so did my mother). But it wasn't. Five months later I was boarding a plane for a 12 hour trip that would take me to a country whose language I didn't speak to spend a month with relatives I hadn't seen in years. It was this experience that definitely made me fall in love with travelling.
After this initial experience, I was never able to stay put. I ended up going to Italy three more times, completely alone. At fourteen, I decided to do an exchange year in Germany. I didn't speak any German. Yet it turned out to be the best choice I had ever made.
I love travelling. I love the feeling of going somewhere new and, as strange as it seems, I love getting lost. I have gotten lost in places I can't even point out on a map. I have cried rivers in a train station after getting down at the wrong station and therefore missing my next two trains. Yet I loved these experiences. Because even though I felt lost and hopeless, I knew that I was learning something. Getting lost to me means that I am trying something new, discovering something that was not available to me before. Getting lost, to me, is wonderful. It is a proof of my independence (and my ability to make things right afterward).
Living in Germany for a year provided me opportunities to lose my way (literally) but also to find myself. To be somewhere new, with people I had never before met, meant learning more about others and also about myself. Different cultures and people are somehow my passion. I enjoy learning more about others and teaching them a bit about myself and my experiences as well.
I got to know people and stories in this year that I had never imagined I would meet in my life. As a history enthusiast, hearing my guest mother tell me about her life on the East side of the Berlin wall took my imagination to infinite places. I like seeing history come alive, and travelling provides me that.
Going to different places opens up the mind, the spirit and the heart. It makes you accept others and also yourself. The person I am today, this one who took the leap to apply to colleges in a different country, is a direct result of the little girl's fearlessness to travel far away just to live something new.
When I was 9 years old, my father asked me if I would like to spend my summer in Italy. At the time, I thought it was joke (and so did my mother). But it wasn't. Five months later I was boarding a plane for a 12 hour trip that would take me to a country whose language I didn't speak to spend a month with relatives I hadn't seen in years. It was this experience that definitely made me fall in love with travelling.
After this initial experience, I was never able to stay put. I ended up going to Italy three more times, completely alone. At fourteen, I decided to do an exchange year in Germany. I didn't speak any German. Yet it turned out to be the best choice I had ever made.
I love travelling. I love the feeling of going somewhere new and, as strange as it seems, I love getting lost. I have gotten lost in places I can't even point out on a map. I have cried rivers in a train station after getting down at the wrong station and therefore missing my next two trains. Yet I loved these experiences. Because even though I felt lost and hopeless, I knew that I was learning something. Getting lost to me means that I am trying something new, discovering something that was not available to me before. Getting lost, to me, is wonderful. It is a proof of my independence (and my ability to make things right afterward).
Living in Germany for a year provided me opportunities to lose my way (literally) but also to find myself. To be somewhere new, with people I had never before met, meant learning more about others and also about myself. Different cultures and people are somehow my passion. I enjoy learning more about others and teaching them a bit about myself and my experiences as well.
I got to know people and stories in this year that I had never imagined I would meet in my life. As a history enthusiast, hearing my guest mother tell me about her life on the East side of the Berlin wall took my imagination to infinite places. I like seeing history come alive, and travelling provides me that.
Going to different places opens up the mind, the spirit and the heart. It makes you accept others and also yourself. The person I am today, this one who took the leap to apply to colleges in a different country, is a direct result of the little girl's fearlessness to travel far away just to live something new.