Stanford students possess an intellectual vitality. Reflect on an idea or experience that has been important to your intellectual development?
When people from previous generations wanted to learn about current events or a particular topic, they read the newspaper, a book, or a magazine. If I want to learn about absolutely anything, I have access to any number of articles and blog posts and sites about that topic, via the Internet. The problem is sorting through the articles, from the brilliant to the inane, and finding the ones I want to read. Stumbleupon solves that problem. Stumbleupon is a brilliant website that is specifically catered to each individual; it asks for your interests, and sends pages it deems relevant to you.
Sometimes it distracts me from homework and sometimes it helps me find the exact page I need for my research project. But the greatest thing about Stumbleupon is that it helps develop my intellectual curiosity. Occasionally I come across an article like the one I read a few days ago, titled "Which 5 Technologies Will Shape the Future?" The technologies were large-scale desalinization, self-driving cars, 3-D printing of functioning organs, space-based solar power, and vertical farms. As soon as I saw that third one, I stopped and thought, "Wait a second. Did that say printing functioning organs? How could that be possible?" I then spent hours reading about the mechanisms and applications of 3-D printing, medical and otherwise. Some say that transplants involving printed organs could be feasible within the next decade! Now that is something that I would want to be involved in. The idea of studying and researching technologies like that fascinates me. So why not study materials engineering?
Thought processes like that are why I consider Stumbleupon to be a significant tool for my intellectual vitality and development. Maybe one day I'll end up developing the printer that doctors will use decades from now to create organs on site for the emergency surgery of patients injured in self-driving car accidents, all because of the interest sparked in me by an article I read on Stumbleupon.
I'm afraid the writing is too bland. There is a 2,000 character limit, and I was originally at around 2600, so I had to cut it down to this (It has 1998 characters).
