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.
I sit back on my chair, put on my headphones and let M. Ward's Transistor Radio album play. The record evokes patchy imagery of a sun-dappled, sepia-toned suburb of a place far away, a place, as M. Ward likes to say, "where time cannot be told". The Hong Kong skyline out my bedroom window appears to slow down and I find myself blankly gazing at a bright advertising billboard on a hotel several miles away. His record manages to soothe my mind until I get about thirty-five seconds into the song Fuel for Fire; the instruments die away until all I hear a raspy voice so delicate that a drop of rain would shatter it. My entire being is mollified.
"I've travelled all kinds of places
The song is always the same
Got lonesome fuel for fire"
Thump, thump, thump. My trance-like state is cut short by a conspicuous thumping in my left ear that overshadows M. Ward's pacifying voice, thanks to the acoustic guitar.
I suffer from single-sided deafness (SSD), also known as monaural hearing or unilateral hearing loss. The type of deafness I suffer from is sensorineural deafness, where the auditory nerve is damaged and cannot transmit nerve impulses from the cochlea to the temporal lobe in the brain. Unlike conductive deafness, the effect of sensorineural deafness cannot be easily alleviated by mere hearing aids. Surgery, specifically a cochlear implant, can help, but has always been inherently risky and expensive. Both SSD and sensorineural deafness are often overlooked in favor of full or conductive deafness.
Unless I listen to older records from before the early 60s, awkward gaps in music and irritating thumps which arise from my left ear only hearing lower frequency sounds are inevitable. Since a young age, I have always loved music. I was introduced to the piano when I was 8 and began teaching myself the guitar 2 years ago. Music has provided me with a way of connecting with other people, putting my opinion forward, and developing my view of the world. My nemesis is the stereo headphone. As of now, there are few earphones designed for sufferers of single-sided deafness. Though there are some earphones for this purpose, many are not carefully researched; they typically merge the left and right channel of music into a single ear bud, but can further exacerbate the deafness in the affected ear. If I were to use these types of earphone, my left ear, which still retains tiny sensitivity in the bass range (<1000 Hz), would further deteriorate as the brain gradually shuts off the left ear due to lack of use. A much safer design would be to have two ear buds, each bud with both channels merged together and equal in volume.
For sufferers of sensorineural deafness, there is a light at the end of the tunnel; advances in stem cell research look promising for sufferers of sensorineural deafness. The cochlea in all animals turns sound waves from the environment into electrical impulses that the brain can interpret. A critical component is stereocilia; stereocilia are hair cells that line the cochlea and are responsible for the conversion of sound waves into electrical impulses. With the help of stem cells, new stereocilia can be synthesized and implanted into the cochlea of the ear, restoring the cochlea's ability to convert sound waves into electrical impulses.
Just the thought of being able to hear articulate sounds in my left ear incites immense determination within me; for the first time, I may be able to listen through M. Ward's Fuel for Fire in total tranquility. M. Ward's lonely voice will be reunited with its long-lost friend on the other side of the headphone, the acoustic guitar, to form a harmonious concoction that appeases the senses. The only thing an SSD sufferer could possibly miss is tranquil sleep; with the hearing ear to the pillow, the whole world lapses into silence!
I am confident that the path to finding a cure for sensorineural deafness is within reach and this is a cause I ardently promote. The study of human physiology and the biological sciences at university will provide me with the vast knowledge needed for truly understanding the condition and its possible cures. Improving earphone design and stereocilia stem cell research are just some of the things I can do to help both the sufferers of single-sided deafness and sensorineural deafness. The door is already open; I just need to walk through it.
I sit back on my chair, put on my headphones and let M. Ward's Transistor Radio album play. The record evokes patchy imagery of a sun-dappled, sepia-toned suburb of a place far away, a place, as M. Ward likes to say, "where time cannot be told". The Hong Kong skyline out my bedroom window appears to slow down and I find myself blankly gazing at a bright advertising billboard on a hotel several miles away. His record manages to soothe my mind until I get about thirty-five seconds into the song Fuel for Fire; the instruments die away until all I hear a raspy voice so delicate that a drop of rain would shatter it. My entire being is mollified.
"I've travelled all kinds of places
The song is always the same
Got lonesome fuel for fire"
Thump, thump, thump. My trance-like state is cut short by a conspicuous thumping in my left ear that overshadows M. Ward's pacifying voice, thanks to the acoustic guitar.
I suffer from single-sided deafness (SSD), also known as monaural hearing or unilateral hearing loss. The type of deafness I suffer from is sensorineural deafness, where the auditory nerve is damaged and cannot transmit nerve impulses from the cochlea to the temporal lobe in the brain. Unlike conductive deafness, the effect of sensorineural deafness cannot be easily alleviated by mere hearing aids. Surgery, specifically a cochlear implant, can help, but has always been inherently risky and expensive. Both SSD and sensorineural deafness are often overlooked in favor of full or conductive deafness.
Unless I listen to older records from before the early 60s, awkward gaps in music and irritating thumps which arise from my left ear only hearing lower frequency sounds are inevitable. Since a young age, I have always loved music. I was introduced to the piano when I was 8 and began teaching myself the guitar 2 years ago. Music has provided me with a way of connecting with other people, putting my opinion forward, and developing my view of the world. My nemesis is the stereo headphone. As of now, there are few earphones designed for sufferers of single-sided deafness. Though there are some earphones for this purpose, many are not carefully researched; they typically merge the left and right channel of music into a single ear bud, but can further exacerbate the deafness in the affected ear. If I were to use these types of earphone, my left ear, which still retains tiny sensitivity in the bass range (<1000 Hz), would further deteriorate as the brain gradually shuts off the left ear due to lack of use. A much safer design would be to have two ear buds, each bud with both channels merged together and equal in volume.
For sufferers of sensorineural deafness, there is a light at the end of the tunnel; advances in stem cell research look promising for sufferers of sensorineural deafness. The cochlea in all animals turns sound waves from the environment into electrical impulses that the brain can interpret. A critical component is stereocilia; stereocilia are hair cells that line the cochlea and are responsible for the conversion of sound waves into electrical impulses. With the help of stem cells, new stereocilia can be synthesized and implanted into the cochlea of the ear, restoring the cochlea's ability to convert sound waves into electrical impulses.
Just the thought of being able to hear articulate sounds in my left ear incites immense determination within me; for the first time, I may be able to listen through M. Ward's Fuel for Fire in total tranquility. M. Ward's lonely voice will be reunited with its long-lost friend on the other side of the headphone, the acoustic guitar, to form a harmonious concoction that appeases the senses. The only thing an SSD sufferer could possibly miss is tranquil sleep; with the hearing ear to the pillow, the whole world lapses into silence!
I am confident that the path to finding a cure for sensorineural deafness is within reach and this is a cause I ardently promote. The study of human physiology and the biological sciences at university will provide me with the vast knowledge needed for truly understanding the condition and its possible cures. Improving earphone design and stereocilia stem cell research are just some of the things I can do to help both the sufferers of single-sided deafness and sensorineural deafness. The door is already open; I just need to walk through it.
