Hi! Can you guys read this over and let me know what you think about, anything you like/don't like about it. Thanks for all your comments in advance :)
Stanford students possess an intellectual vitality. Reflect on an idea or experience that has been important to your intellectual development.
As a child, I wanted to be a ballerina, a writer, or an inventor. I always had the vision of designing and creating the next new things that people would love and utilize. In my imagination, I would consider how to make flying cars and portable houses. Because I always just saw the end invention, the process of making it always seemed a bit enigmatic. The desire to be an inventor and the concept of what an inventor was followed me throughout high school. When I took AP Chemistry, AP Alchemy flew out my head as I discovered how every process in the natural world could be explained and measured with numbers and calculations to make very logical sense. In a way, technology also lost some of its mystical appeal to me.
When I was a child, I would find my father's engineering office a boring place with a lot of wire and equipment resembling dialysis machines. But in high school, when I reentered that similar world during a summer internship at SilverPlus Inc., the wires and computer chips had meaning. My intern project was to develop a complex program, which ran on a microcontroller, to make it drive a piezo speaker. I enjoyed programming for its math, but this assignment seemed beyond my level. An engineer taught me the techniques of simplifying a complex piece of code by testing it in smaller chunks, until at last I began to analyze it. I realized that the mystical "engineering genius" I expected of brilliant engineers was their creativity in inventing simple techniques to gracefully solve nested problems. After weeks on this project, I tested my program and made it send voltage currents through the speaker. I saw the voltage waves appear on the oscilloscope and heard the speaker's clear sound with the probe; it was like seeing my creation's pulse and hearing its voice. It mystified me that something I helped invent on a computer could work in real life. I felt that the process of inventing something was probably always more amazing than the end invention itself.
Excellent essay, shows how you have grown intellectually and how you have become more focused as you grew older...
I suggest you change "how every process in the natural world could be explained..." , I had trouble understanding what you meant, and its a bit of an exaggeration...
Otherwise, great essay and good luck!
Check my essays too!
Thanks! I fix that part about my essay :)
And sure, I'd love to take a look at your essays:D
"When I was a child, I would find my father's engineering office a boring place with a lot of wire and equipment resembling dialysis machines. But in high school, when I reentered that similar world during a summer internship at SilverPlus Inc., the wires and computer chips had meaning. My intern project was to develop a complex program, which ran on a microcontroller, to make it drive a piezo explain? speaker. I enjoyed programming for its math, but this assignment seemed beyond my level. The engineers taught me the techniques simplifying a complex code by testing it in smaller chunks. After I finally learned the ropes I realized that the mystical "engineering genius" I expected of brilliant engineers was their creativity in finding simple techniques to gracefully solve nested problems. After weeks on the project, I got to test my program and make it send voltage currents through the speaker. I saw the voltage waves appear on the oscilloscope and heard the speaker's clear sound with the probe; it was like seeing my creation's pulse and hearing its voice. I remembered all my fond fantasies of creating new innovations and now I felt I could pursue that dream into college. More amazing than the end product itself was the whole process of its invention."
I think the second paragraph is interesting! I would check some grammar, and personally, I don't know what a piezo speaker is, but if it would be common knowledge to admission counselors, it's probably fine the way it is. In the first paragraph, I think that mentioning the ballerina and writer part adds detail, but is not the best for the flow of the overall essay. It sounds like you are setting up to talk a little bit about them, but they are never mentioned after the first line, which is a bit confusing.
It sounds like a really cool project! Good luck!
P.S. If you were to comment on my admissions essays (some are yet to be posted!), I would really appreciate it :)
Thank you so very much :) Yeah, i thought that too about the ballerina, etc
Sure! I'd love to read your too:)
