College Admissions Essay: My Desire For Knowledge

Former baseball player Tommy Lasorda once said, “The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a person’s determination.” The journey of our life is full of winding paths and concrete obstacles whose sole goal is to slow us down, and to attempt to block us from reaching our ultimate goal in life, whatever that may be. These barriers are there for several different reasons, whether it be mental or physical. Sometimes these obstacles are motivated by fear, other times they exist simply because we have to make a decision, and that decision can be life changing. But through our determination, and through our perseverance, we can achieve what these barriers told us was impossible, and can pursue the path in our life that leads us to our ultimate self. Throughout my life, I have had thousands of barriers stand in my path. And the only way I was able to defeat them was through conquering my fears, and breaking my limits in order to achieve excellence.

I dreamt of walking on Commonwealth Ave. I envisioned myself entering the Morse Auditorium, books in hand, eager to learn. Ever since I had visited the eclectic city of Boston in 2006, I knew it was the right fit for me. I knew that the city itself, along with the remarkable academic resources that Boston University offers would allow me to grow socially and mentally. Until this day I ask questions on end from my comrades at the BU, impatient to learn more and more about their lives on and off campus. From all the feedback I have received I have come to one conclusion: BU is the place where I will get a rich, broad background in all my studies. BU will give me the foundation and preparation I will need to enter any field of study.

Questions, tests, and psyche evaluations can't let you know what your ideal profession might be, yet they can help you recognize what's paramount to you in a career choice, what you appreciate doing, and where you outperform.

Curiosity, the search for knowledge, is an essential dimension of human nature. Embracing this as fact is the beginning of ones journey into the realms of the erudite. The path this journey follows has been wearied by the feet of many great travelers, yet it is the one I have chosen to follow.

Being chained from ignorance can cause devastating effect on a person’s life. In reality, most people do not want to believe in the truth but prefer to blind themselves from what is occurring around the world. Being ignorant is the back bone of prejudices and bias. Many individuals are chained to the wall of ignorance. It might be because of self-preference or cultural influence. Many are fearful of change because of what they might not understand or the refusal to understand one’s culture. United States is cultivated as one of the most diverse countries in the world. Due to this melting pot, there are numerous multicultural ideas, religion, cultural values and sexuality. Every individual must have a sense of self-identity

My personal quest for knowledge has been ongoing since the first day I picked up a science book. I have never been more interested in any subject. It truly spoke to me. At a college level, there is a magnitude of opportunities. I had the opportunity to participate in the Student Dissector program on campus in the Spring of 2015, I visited the Stanford Cadaver Lab with Biology Club this semester, and I traveled to see a talk by the world renowned American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, and science communicator, Neil deGrasse Tyson.

I was raised in upstate New York, where my father runs a small business. I have always admired my father, but I never gave much thought to following in his footsteps to pursue a career in business. From an early age, I've gravitated towards the sciences as a way to understand the world around me. I grew up watching episodes of Bill Nye the Science Guy, diligently recreating every experiment I could at home. I enjoyed the discovery process inherent in the scientific method—proposing a hypothesis about the world and proving or disproving it with data. My coursework in high school and college contained a healthy dose of math and science, and for much of my time at Dartmouth I expected to enter academia, or at the very least, become an engineer.

This forced me analyze my life thus far, to recognize my fears and what I hold dear. It’s only been sixteen (one month till seventeen) years in this carcass, but I already feel like an entire life has flown by. It was like a prerequisite of actually watching my life flash before my eyes. This project was nice to sit back and look at what a social mess I am (one of my most favorite pastimes). But also, only being sixteen, I don’t hold what many would believe to be true values, dreams, fears, and identity. Nevertheless, this is what I have so far.

Imagine me -- a hotshot 14 year old, destined for the Ivy leagues, captain of the JV wrestling squad (weighing in at an impressive 5'3", 115 pounds), and an overall smart alec strolling into high school as if it owed me something. Failure was not a part of my claimed impressive and nothing could stop me from being top of my class (spoiler if you haven't looked at the rest of my application: I'm not).

Education is something that is often taken for granted. The pursuit of learning is not always met with energy and excitement and I have understood the challenges that school can bring. The challenging parts of school, however, are necessary to personal growth. Throughout my years of schooling through middle school and through high school I noticed how I would sometimes have to push myself harder than other people to be on the same level as others, and would often become frustrated in my efforts. As I have graduated and aspire to become a doctor, I have realized how important frustration and struggle is to education.

To start off, I enjoy doing labs and research, most people would not want to explore new things but just learn new things. I am different, I want to be the person that makes new things for other people, I want to be the one that experiments with new things and find out myself how something works rather than just Google it and read about it. I feel like I have a lot of curiosity, that I almost feed off it and always follow it. A lot people say that curiosity is not always good that it can lead you to bad situations but I think that it's the opposite. I think that if you experience something by hand you know it the best and it can lead to something that can further be explored. Another part of me loves not just to explore but reach a goal as well.

I thought was fully prepared for college when I walked across the stage on June 1st, 2015, but I was completely wrong. College is a whole new lifestyle that you eventually learn to adapt to everyday. The advice you hear from parents everyday is something you take with you as you navigate throughout campus. Some of the previous advice my mother gave to me is the advice I should of listened to. Now that I am older and on my own, it’s up to me to figure out how everything works.

What you see is not always what it is. We learn to perceive what we're looking at, and we get used to how things are supposed to be. I was always fascinated by the illusion pictures that at first glance is strikingly simple to guess what it is, if you give more attention to detail you see another picture in it. What inspired me the most and made me a curious person was how missing one detail can change the whole outlook of the picture – just as missing one aspect from patient’s evaluation can lead to a wrong diagnosis. This taught me the importance of thoroughness in doing anything in my life. My meticulous nature has been an incredible driving force behind who I am

An inquisitive nature breeds unhappiness within and without. They say the most intelligent beings are the saddest, hold the most turmoil in their painful bodies. These are the brave souls who ask questions they are afraid of the answers to.

Finding out how and why things work and discovering how products are made has always my passion. I regularly watch engineering and science shows on the television. From my childhood, I have always been a very curious person who would not believe just because someone told me, but I had to know the reason behind it. Science always fascinated me, and I always wondered how we remained on the ground and never fell off something that is spherical. In school I was more interested in maths and science rather than History or Arts and this made me choose Chemistry, maths and physics as my Higher subjects. This has helped me appreciate how Science has been utilised to improve man’s life and make it easier. It is because of this that I would like to