Students always ask about the essay. Topic selection, length, style, message – there is so much to think about. We realize that it is not an easy process, to say the least. So it is our pleasure to share with you 17 exceptional essays penned by members of the Tufts Class of 2011.

So why do we love these essays?

These pieces captured the distinct voices of these young men and women, and forged a powerful and affective human connection with their readers. They truly helped to set these students apart in our applicant pool. They compelled, magnetized, and fascinated us. They demonstrated creativity and illuminated curiosity.

We are infinitely proud of these students and the essays they wrote. We hope that these works will inspire you to find your unique voice as you craft your words and stories in the months to come.

-The Tufts University Admissions Officers

Click on the student's name to read his or her essay:

Cate School

California

Radnor High School

Pennsylvania

Oak Ridge High School

Tennessee

South Kingstown High School

Rhode Island

American School in London

England

Oyster Bay High School

New York

Watchung Hills High School

New Jersey

Francis Parker

Illinois

Emery/Weiner School

Texas

East Lansing High School

Michigan

Taconic High School

Massachusetts

Holliston High School

Massachusetts

Central High School

Iowa

Cherry Creek High School

Colorado

Milburn High School

New Jersey

Christian Academy in Japan

Japan

Loomis-Chaffee School

Connecticut

This past summer I trekked throughout Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar. With my Canon camera in hand, I journeyed to remote mountain villages and metropolitan cities, documenting my journey through image along the way.† After six weeks of living in hill tribe villages, planting rice, teaching English, and experiencing the Southeast Asian scene, I came away with pictures that embodied the essence of who I met and what I did along the way.† This was my first real experience with art photography and I was immediately hooked.† The ability to capture single moments of human emotion was something I had never before experienced.

I loved the process of taking the pictures even more than the product.† Every shot had a story behind it.† In Kep, a fishing village in Cambodia, I was walking along the rocky shoreline and noticed some fishermen struggling to bring in their small boat against the surging tide.† I rolled up my pants and sloshed into the water and lent a hand in bringing the boat to shore.† Then, I asked, in their language, if I could take pictures of them and their families.† This is the story behind the picture of the two children standing on the boat.† In this way, not only was I able to produce more honest images, but I embraced the culture I was documenting, instead of just indifferently taking the picture.

Upon my return from Asia, I realized it would be difficult to tell friends and family what I had done and have them to be able to truly understand it.† I had kept a journal throughout my travels and yet, I knew that words were not going to cut it.† My photographs would tell what my journal could not.

I have not yet had the opportunity to study photography in high school; however, I plan on developing my skills in college.† Once I do, I believe I will have the power to tell stories and show emotion that words are unable to depict.† Especially, in this conflict-strewn world we live in today, it is invaluable to have knowledge of what is truly going on around the globe.† As it is now, the true stories of refugees, of separated families and countries that are being raped by war and genocide, are bowdlerized for the public.† I want to go out into the world and tell its story through my camera lens.† If the truth can get out to the world, then change can begin.† If the world remains unaware, the pain of millions will go unchecked and unnoticed.† I want to be a messenger to the world and tell the story of the meek and oppressed, for they do not have the means themselves.

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A half dozen seventh graders clamber out of a rusty yellow van, each student squirming to pull on sneakers and gather together field study notebooks.† Two of them grab the grimy plastic milk crate crammed with testing equipment and fraying books written on stream wildlife.† The motley crew hurries down to the stream, clad in clothes long outgrown, laughing and singing as they splash among the algae-covered rocks and fallen trees.† For a few hours, the “seventh grade” label is wiped away.† These kids are transformed.† This was how I spent my seventh grade year—in a class called Watershed.†

Watershed was unlike any educational experience I had ever had.† It was a team-taught class of thirty-six students given the opportunity to learn in an integrated program focused on the natural history of our local Darby Creek watershed.† We learned from experience—each week embarking on field trips to local streams where we analyzed the waterways’ overall biodiversity.† We tested phosphate, nitrogen, and dissolved oxygen levels of the water, while also keeping tabs on larvae and water dwellers that hid under rocks and logs.† We had no boundaries to our creativity.† We worked in groups, and presented our projects in extravagant ways.† I recall acting out the digestive system in one absurd skit, and composing “rock” concerts that displayed our knowledge of geology.† The most stunning part of Watershed was that there were no grades.† Our learning was entirely self-motivated, structured around the concept of self-evaluation.† As a result, we learned that education is about more than numbers or letters; education is furthering knowledge of the world, and preparing you for the future.

A watershed is defined as an area of high land with water on either side that drains to two different river systems.† It marks a change in direction and a new course of flow.† For me, seventh grade was itself a watershed.† It was the pivotal point of my adolescence, a year that molded that way I look at school and the world.† Watershed gave me a passion for learning and taught me to approach education with an intensity and drive that I had never known before.† Several years later, in tenth grade, I enrolled in another integrated honors class titled Global Issues.† It was in Global Issues that I took this love fore learning to the next level.† I discovered a deep and genuine passion for the study of world politics and cultures.† That year I ingested masses of information, learning about everything from Hamas to Hinduism.† I became addicted to the news and editorial comment, reading The New York Times every morning and watching BBC World Service every night.† My interest for these topics deepened not because my teachers required it to, but because I was hungry for knowledge.

In nature, every watershed is but a small splinter of a larger system.† Every system combines with neighboring systems to form a larger watershed, until the aggregate forms the largest watershed of all—the ocean.† My watershed year was similarly a small part of a greater watershed—the path to realizing that a spark of inspiration can kindle a great fire.† For me that fire is a love of learning and an appetite to know more about our world.

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I have always disliked skateboards. They are simple, poor concoctions created from one piece of fiberglass and four wheels, eight screws, and some scratchy black stuff that is glued on the top. This over-rated, one-and-a-half-foot mechanism is the icon of a new genre of individuals. These teens, known as “skaters,” represent freedom, rebellion, danger, and chaos; and yet, despite these valiant characteristics, the group as a whole truly annoys me. They frequently irritate innocent businessmen by scratching on sidewalks, occasionally run over old ladies walking down the street, and generally anger the adult population in my small city of Oak Ridge. Ironically, regardless of preconceived notions, five months ago I risked funds of my commission and my personal reputation as I stood before City Council in a pressed business suit, passionately presenting my proposal for a new skate park for this targeted group of individuals.

Immediately after I was elected chairman of the Oak Ridge City Youth Advisory Board (YAB), a branch of City Council that serves as the liaison between the council and the youth of Oak Ridge, I was overjoyed. I was excited until the following day when I was informed that the advisor of fourteen years would be leaving for another job. I was to run the entire YAB on my own until a new, unfortunate soul would be hired to take on the difficult task of advising a commission of teens. During this time period, I could not relax and wait for a new advisor; instead, it was time to edit the bylaws, tighten our attendance policies, upgrade our tutoring program, and increase communication with City Council. As a start, I scheduled a work session with members of City Council to hear their requests for the future direction of the YAB. Their only desire was to receive a “State of the Youth Address” from the chairman at the end of the year. Knowing that I would be the lucky individual to deliver this speech, I gave them a stressful, nervous smile, thanked them, and left. From then on, the Board had a new mission: to obtain and evaluate the views of the youth and formulate a method to change the City of Oak Ridge into a “youth-friendly” city.

The day finally came. I stood before the fates. My hands trembled; my voice cracked, but I continued to speak, not for myself but for my fellow peers. I spoke of skateboard ramps, quarter pipes, grinding rails, fun boxes, and other “skateable items” that I did not even comprehend. I supplied pecuniary figures and estimates, explained construction phases one through three, and yet, while I am positive I will never desire to flip on the future skate park quarter pipe, five months after my address I am overjoyed that these skaters are one step closer to receiving a new, upcoming arena that can serve as their true haven. From this experience, I realize that a true leader is an individual who will overcome personal preferences, rise to the occasion, support the under-dog, and deferentially scream until justice is met and the community is improved. I guess that would be me.

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I have no idea what inspired me, but one day when I was in the first grade, I decided that I should stop wearing matching socks. The decision to stop could have been anything from a conscious declaration of individualism to simple frustration with pairing them when they came out of the wash.† Regardless, I remember my classmates reacting in all sorts of ways. I’d never call attention to my socks, but every once in a while I’d catch other students trying the mismatched socks thing out; I’d give those classmates knowing looks because I knew that they “understood.” But now, I wonder what it was that other mismatched sock wearers and I “understood.”

My family moved to North Carolina from Maryland as I was entering the third grade. At the time, Greensboro was a very economically and racially segregated town. In general, students who performed well in school were the white children of upper-class surgeons and lawyers, who often stuck together in cliques. African American students generally came from families who literally lived on the other side of town, with fewer opportunities due to lower economic status and sundry associated problems. My middle-class family, comprised of loving Jamaican parents, my brother, and myself, lived in a reasonably priced apartment on the “good” side of town, where every night I diligently and eagerly completed my homework for the advanced classes in which I was one of few minorities enrolled.

I didn’t have the easiest time assimilating. White students, finding my academic performance threatening and my lack of wealth boring, rarely invited me into their lives. African American students were noticeably guarded around me, causing sly but certainly intentional estrangement. I remember one day at lunch, I walked by a table where many of the African American students were seated. A boy beckoned me in a detached tone, asking me why my socks didn’t match. I tried to explain that it’s a great feeling to stick your hand in a drawer each morning and randomly choose socks for that day. The same boy looked at me silently for a moment, and then proceeded to tell me that I was “not black enough.”

I went home and cried to my parents. I think it was not only what the boy had said – I was genuinely perplexed by his comment; rather, I was confused by the extent to which people will go to avoid getting to know others who are different from themselves. Over time, I realized that I was never going to be what people expect. At first glance I am “black.” At a second, more politically correct glance, I am African American. But I do not identify with the stereotype that goes along with the title. I am the child of Jamaican immigrants; my parents are from a country rich with spirit, history, and pride, with which I feel a direct connection. My parents brought an unbreakable sense of self with them to the United States and passed that on to me. Because of this sense of self, I was able to bounce back, think of my cafeteria experience as a blessing in disguise, and shed my need to live up to anyone else’s expectations. I looked forward to the day when, as my parents said, I would enter college and meet other students with exciting connections to all parts of the world.

Now, at the age of seventeen, my socks still rarely match. I don’t know why I did it then, but I think I should honor the fact that something about mismatched socks was so important to me as a child.† And I continue to insist that any connection between ethnicity and matching socks is a non-sequitur.

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The music grows louder, the bass line booms, and my voice begins rhyming over the beat.† I hear the problem immediately: I have again mispronounced a particularly bothersome lyric.† Exhausted and hoarse, I insert a homemade collection of songs into the stereo.† The sounds of Rakim, Nas, and Brother Ali are the perfect motivation.† I am back striding toward the microphone to try the verse again.† I am recording my first album.† My love letter to hip-hop, the album is a culmination of a relationship that started almost a decade ago.†

I took my first steps into pop culture in 1998.† Coincidentally, Eminem was the moment’s coolest, newest musician.† I was captivated.† He cursed, he rebelled against authority, he glorified violence - how could any ten-year-old boy resist?† Having memorized Eminem’s entire CD within a week, I started searching for new music.† Hip-hop, the genre responsible for such foul-mouthed hilarity, seemed natural.† And the more I read, heard, and saw, the more I was attracted.†

My mother, a product of the Soviet Union intelligentsia, infused my childhood with culture.† The giants of Russian literature composed my childhood reading.† I giggled at Pushkin’s puns and cried at Lermontov’s imagery at bedtime.† Hearing hip-hop’s intricately crafted lyrics, I felt at home.† The songs were filled with the word play and poetry I know since the crib.† Hip-hop seemed familiar and natural, a perfect match. †

A year later, my bookcase filled with hip-hop biographies and my stereo presets tuned to rap stations, simply consuming hip-hop was no longer enough.† Having heard the neighborhood bully brag about his newfound ability to rap, I decided to challenge him.† My friends cheered at my verse, a send-up of the bully’s features, personality, and speech.† I felt glorious.† Unfortunately, he was less thrilled, and I received a beating.† Walking away, a bruised, bloody mess, I still stood tall.† I was a rapper, in league with my heroes.† I had begun on the path that continues to this day, the journey of the rapper.†

My music is not meant for the mainstream and will never top the Billboard charts.† The money spent on recording my album will, in all likelihood, exceed my revenue.† Rap is an unlikely career choice.† Nonetheless, whatever my occupation, it will reflect rap’s influence on my development.† I could have come of age during the emergence of punk instead of hip-hop, my mother could have read my fairytales instead of poems, and my neighborhood could have composed a rock song instead of a rap.† If I had grown up in a different era, a different family, a different neighborhood, hip-hop would have never been a part of my life.†

As it happened, my environment introduced rap, and my circumstances propelled me to explore the culture.† At 18-years-old, I am about to make choices that will impact the rest of my life.† If I am surrounded by students with their own experience and beliefs and faculty ready to challenge and support my ideas, college will be more than simply another four years of homework and lectures.† The course of my life will be determined by the choices I make.† Just as the right audio equipment produces a high quality recording, the right environment will help me choose a worthy path.†

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Passing through the Athenian agora, I try to keep my head down, not just to evade the attention of the Persian garrison, but to avoid the shame that has clenched my gut each day for the past forty years.

“This is the fight for everything.”† The words of Themistocles rang heavy on our ears as our triremes rocked in the morning tide.† With Athens burning and our citizens in flight, the narrow straits of Salamis offered our last hope against the Persian armada.† The sight of so many city-states rallying to a common defense brought tears to my eyes as we donned our breastplates and greaves.† It was our duty to hold a tight formation, to block the entry of Persian ships into the strait.† Themistocles had not been appointed leader of the fleet, but his charisma and ambition left little doubts as to who was in charge.

At the ready, my comrades and I watched as the Persian triremes loomed large on the horizon.† Then came the inevitable crash.† The battle was a blur.† I remember waving my bloody half-pike in the pitched fervor as our iron embolons smashed through enemy hulls.† Gazing through the chaos, Themistocles spotted the flagship of Admiral Ariamenes and ordered us to close in for a final, decapitating strike.† It was then, as he stood, sword-arm thrust forward, I saw the Phoenician arrow strike his chest.† Oh, how easily can fortune turn!† Kneeling beside his lifeless body, I heard a cry go up from the Persians.† Emboldened by our grievous loss, they rallied, surrounding our scattered and leaderless contingent.† The wood beneath my feet cracked and everything went black.

I awoke on a shore not far from the battle.† The Persian navy was sailing past Xerxes, seated on his golden throne, in a victory procession.† They now had the naval supremacy needed to support their massive army as it swept through the Peloponnese.

The pain of our failure has not been softened by the passing years.† Everywhere are reminders of what was lost.† The Assembly, so long a symbol of democratic ideal, is gone, replaced by the palace of Xerxes’ son.† Our brilliant young Sophocles, now condemned in mock trial for his “rebellious and subversive” works, was executed at the agora.† The academies now teach only Zoroastrian zealotry, and our women can no longer show their faces in public.† The despair wrought by a single arrow…

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An airy, bright room with violets blooming on the wallpaper.† Plush purple carpet, rich dark wooden desk, clothes strewn across the floor, CDs scattered on the bedspread.† Homework, love notes, sketches of lanky girls, papers stacked and spread around the room.† Baubles: a teddy bear, a scrawled phone number, a scarf.† Accessories, fragments, bits and pieces of a girl, a shell left behind.† The air holds a sweetness, her perfume, a breeze drifts through the open window.† Grasp at threads of her being: a sense, a presence that trails after her.† She has just wandered out, her shadow still shimmers in the summer heat, filling the room.

If she never returned, what would remain?† How much could be learned from a single bedroom, about a girl who once sat within its walls?† Treasures lie undiscovered, boxes of crisp letters under the bed and sheaves of bitter poetry.† Empty beauty, wishing to drink it in, dreaming it would permeate her own veins.† These photos from Vogue, these sketchbooks filled with pouting darlings, demonstrations of an intangible pastime, a hobby of cherishing the exquisite.

Books are piled at the foot of her bed, some punctuated by makeshift bookmarks, others untouched.† Stories thumbed through and discarded, or devoured with a feverish intensity; her emotions caught so tightly in its pages, a puckered circle from a single tear marks the last sentence.† A spot on the carpet, fuchsia nail polish, murmuring a tale of angered parents and raised voices, the girl bursting hysterically out of the house, running and running away.† The bureau like a beach littered with jewels, a collection of tangled necklaces, strings of old pearls, beads and colored glass.† Throw open the closet doors, we’ll find a rainbow of attire, waiting eagerly to be worn.† Lacy dresses shift their hems, whispering, smoothing their creases and remembering the touch of soft skin within their folds: the girl.† The girl going to parties, glittering and coiffed, heels clicking on the kitchen tile, skirt swishing past her knees.† The girl coming home late, dropping her purse on the chair and shedding her dress with a sigh, climbing into the silky cool sheets and curling up to sleep.

A room, a home, a refuge.† The girl who once lived within these walls is almost gone—and yet I can feel her stirring within me.† After all, we live in the evidence of our past, haunted by mistakes and glowing from triumph.† Time has made the girl a part of me, a building block in my subconscious, a single step on the way to this present.† This room belongs to a girl who was once me, but it’s time to gather my thoughts and things and close the door.

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My Thoughts on Fantasy

To many, fantasy is a genre that is ruled over by three kings. One is a little English brat with an unruly scar on his head and an unnatural worldwide following. One is a monumental text that has been reduced to pitiful jokes and misinterpretation by all too many “ringworms.” And the third is whatever flavor of the week captures the attention of the bored or the over-imaginative until it too is turned into a movie and passes by.††

Yet to me the true side of fantasy will always remain alive and well, and that is the fact that you can make a truer story in a world that you own, create, and have complete dominion over than any tale of things already experienced, or any attempt to write fictional fellows into an all too real world. Terry Pratchett, Kate Elliot, and Terry Goodkind, to name a few, have created far more real people on lands with dragons than any “standard fiction” writer I have encountered. But I have always loved fantasy, though it took me all too long to meet the genre that was to define my leisure reading life.

In the second grade I began to read the Hardy boys series, a standard fictional series, a classic. Over the course of the year and the following summer I quickly read the first 40 to 50 of them, often times staying up late at night to finish this chapter or that. I was engrossed, and loved every minute of it. But the light that was shed on me was a mere candle compared to the nuclear blast that was to drop on my tender mind. In the third grade, much to the vexation of some of my classmates, I read “The Hobbit” and then later “Lord of the Rings.” I have never been so blown away by two books in such short succession. After that, the Hardy boys seemed two-dimensional paper-cut-outs trying to fit into a three dimensional world. But Bilbo and Frodo truly inspired me, and the friends and enemies they met along their travels taught me more about human nature than any coming-of-age novel about a kid who struggles against the odds.

After that I was hooked. I was on an insatiable fantasy reading frenzy. It took me everywhere, on the soccer bus, at summer camp, in my room, on vacation, on the plane, even at the beach; wherever I was, I was trying to read another book. One might have worried for me socially had these works of art not taught me so much about human nature. In the “Sword Maker, Sword Breaker” series I learned my first lessons of male-female interaction, long before the awkward middle school dances and surging hormones of the seventh and eighth grade. In Stephen R. Donaldson’s “The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant,” I was first exposed to death and rebirth from within and extreme violence. It shocked and awed me to the extent that it has profoundly affected my treatment of the fairer gender to this very day, much for the better.

Rather than live vicariously through these characters, as some do, I find that they are perfect models, windows, into the human psyche. If you want to read some real psychological thrillers, read a book in which the psycho’s brain can control the ebb and flow of water, or conjure up unruly things of blackness and murk. Because of fantasy, I have a vocabulary and writing style that allows me to write fiction, nonfiction, critical, or even, dare I say it? College essays. I realize that fantasy novels are not for everyone, but to me they have been a teacher, a companion, a journey, and a pure unadulterated entertaining bliss.

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Two summers ago when my family visited South Africa, I faced a painful reality. Though I had grown up visiting South Africa from time to time (my parents are natives of Johannesburg), I had never been to Robben Island—a now-defunct prison—that had served to incarcerate and obliterate the wills of the opponents of Apartheid.

The July winter air was chilly and the Atlantic’s churning waves made for a bumpy ferry ride from the mainland. When we arrived, I saw springbok and other small game on the grounds of the prison—an irony for me: such free creatures in a place so committed to the stripping of freedom. Inside the prison I saw cold, concrete cells, filthy sleeping mats, and the limestone quarries. Nelsons Mandela’s cell made a special impression on me in contrast to the warm humanitarian I met through his autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom.” His cell was grey, desolate, an isolated concrete square about half the size of my closet. I admired this man’s remarkable ability to look clearly and optimistically into the future through this lens of inhumanity. Outside, I touched the grainy limestone scratches and indentations left by prisoners forced to perform the back-breaking labor of excavating limestone by hand in the oppressive African heat.

After we had returned to the comfort of our Cape Town flat, I felt perturbed and very confused. How is it that my parents—my compassionate, loving parents—and this place of horror existed so close to one another? I asked my mom and dad about life during Apartheid. News then, they said, was highly censored, and as a consequence they were in many ways ignorant of the government’s treatment of political prisoners. Dad said violence and social upheaval were simply too dangerous to talk about. When Mom was working as a professor at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, it was widely known that in each class, at least one person was spying for the government. Mom had to be perfectly apolitical for fear of being sent to prison, maybe never to return.† She told me how those who spoke out suffered serious consequences: arrest and disappearance without any contact with their families.

My visit to Robben Island taught me something about perception: sometimes it fails us. My parents, both of whom are kindhearted, well-educated and loving people, were silenced and made blind by a government that sought total control. In the same way, I constantly consider to what extent my government compromises my voice and vision.

Robben Island revealed my worldview’s innate imperfection. I recognize that I will always see the world through a specific lens. I must combat the ignorance, complacency and passivity that enabled the suffering on Robben Island; that unchallenged, will continue to enable oppression. I educate myself to make a difference. Expanding my comfort zone and widening my perspective will give me the tools I need to best minimize affliction in the communities I work to protect. I’ve learned that although we are all fallible, we are all connected; and it is my passion, nay, my responsibility to eradicate apathy and to combat suffering.

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“Did I pee today?” I asked myself as I pulled up to a red light, the brisk stop sending my very full bladder into painful somersaults.† I rummaged through my brain, trying to remember my last trip to the bathroom; it had been at 6:00 that morning.† The car’s clock currently read 3:30.† All day, I had been running, running against time to get the newspaper to the printer, running the halls to get to my next class, and now I was running to a meeting and I was running late.† However, my bladder couldn’t wait, I decided, as I made a spontaneous right and pulled into the nearest parking lot.† Ripping my keys out of the ignition, I started to hop up the cement stairs leading to the large glass and metal building in front of me: The East Lansing Public Library.† I paused at its doors and stared.† They foyer of a building that was once so familiar to me, now seemed like foreign territory.† Still, I could remember the hold the library once had over me, how it challenged me and pushed me to grow.

As a child, the library provided me with the chance to reinvent myself, a way to understand experiences I had never lived or felt.† I would wander the aisles, losing myself among towering shelves of books.† Stories would whisper to me, beckoning me to remove them from their homes on the bookshelves.† Opening the covers, I would gain access to portals into uncharted worlds.† On rainy days, when I longed for a sister to play with, I would lounge by the library fireplace and immerse myself in the lives of the March sisters.† Turning the worn pages of “Little Women,” I would imagine that I, too, participated in their theatrical company, sharing secrets in the attic.† In second grade, when my closest friends had to cope with divorce, the nearest I could come to understanding their pain seemed through the insights of Amber Brown.

The number of worlds I could enter appeared endless and by the fifth grade I longed to read more advanced material.† Having devoured the collected works of Roald Dahl, E.L. Koningsburg, Lousia May Alcott, and Louise Fitzhugh, I felt this incredible urge to venture into more monumental works of adult fiction where, I convinced myself, the great secrets of life resided.† As I entered the adult fiction section of the library, no one stopped me.† No one even stirred from their endeavors to contemplate why an eleven- year-old was wandering the general fiction shelves. And when I approached the check out desk with Capote’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” in hand, the librarian only smiled and stamped its cover.† That night, oblivious to Holly Golightely’s true occupation and with only a glamorous portrait of Audrey Hepburn in my mind, I finished Capote’s novella with a satisfying sense of accomplishment.† I felt I had transformed into a witty, sassy intellectual.† It didn’t matter that I had failed to understand the principle message of the story.† The library had fed me a morsel of adulthood and I reveled in it.

As I washed my hands in the library restroom, a bittersweet wave of nostalgia fell over me.† Although literature still played a crucial role in my life, I had long abandoned the library.† It seemed so sad that the thing that brought me into a building that was once my home away from home was a need to pee.† Had serendipity played a part in bringing me to the library restroom at the start of my senior year?† Maybe it had.† For, like the library, my hometown and my high school would soon be pushed to my past.† In a year, I would begin my venture into the land of college, and soon the house I called home would no longer be “home.”† Just as this library had served its role in my growth, so had my “home” and everything that composed it.† Gazing at my reflections in the bathroom mirror, I felt ready to move into the adult section of life.

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Half & Half Films. It is a self-imposed joke: half boys, half girls, since the gay kid likes to be counted as both. It is typical of our collective sense of humor.

Half & Half has been, for the last year or so, the reason I do not sleep on the weekends. I don’t have time. This is not an extracurricular to me; it is a job – a job that means sitting on frozen pavement at three in the morning with a camcorder and four friends, eating donuts, spending two hours filming a scene that will edit to ten minutes and not make any of us a nickel. I don’t want anything else. This is my greatest achievement.

If we did not have our weekly marathons – Star Wars, Humphrey Bogart, Back to the Future, The Thin Man – I would be a much less interesting person. It is when you reference Casablanca† and Lawrence of Arabia in a history essay, when you can discuss the philosophy of The Matrix with your mom, or when you spend any time you can squeeze out of a day looking for film festivals, that you know you are a film geek. It is a badge of honor.

I have had actors not show up, show up drunk, and attempt a hostile takeover of the film to turn it into a party movie a la Animal House. My fifty-minute movie has taken more than a year to produce. I suppose, looking back, that this is what I was signing on for, hiring flaky actors because we have no money and they will work for donuts and coffee. If I had known though, I still would have done it. It is tiring and frustrating, but it is fun, and I am creating something that will last – if only on celluloid or disk – forever. Our motivation is not conventional; it is pure passion. We know we are getting nothing material in return.

Half & Half is important because I created it with my best friends, a cheap camcorder, and an idea that we could finally become more than film geeks – filmmakers. So far, it seems to be working. Someone will remember what we do. I don’t want to be famous – at least not yet. I only want someone to think that students creating, getting outside themselves, and accomplishing something that has nothing to do with grades, money, or social status, is important.

Our first completed film is a mockumentary about B-list actors. But who really cares what it is about? We made a movie! We have several more in varying stages of production. We have things that we have created together. That’s really why I do it: because someday my friends will be far away, and this way I will not forget them. As Bogie would say, “We’ll always have Paris.” The people we care about are all we have, and I have mine on DVD. “Written and Directed by Sarah Nadeau, starring Lance Madewell and Matt DeWinkeleer.”

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I sat at my desk staring at a blank screen.† “This is my canvas,” I thought.† I looked down at my keyboard and mouse and with the gentle stroke of a paintbrush, I set to my work.† The task ahead of me would be long and arduous, but with a smile I began to type: “public class ATUnity:System.Windows.Forms.Form.”

I was excited to be writing my first involved program.† It would be a calculator that could parse entire lines at a time and handle order of operations.† I had become annoyed with Microsoft Windows calculator and thought, “Why not make my own?”† I was an artist working in my element.† Just as a musician composes a song, or a painter paints a picture, I was playing a computer.† With a series of ‘if’s, ‘and’s, and ‘or’s I could dictate how electrical pulses should flow through the central processing unit creating something seemingly simplistic.† Of course, that is what art is: a series of complicated processes working harmoniously to create something simple.

As with all works of art, I started with a vision.† I knew what I would create and had an idea of how I would make it.† I combined the problem solving tactics of math with the creativity of art to create something beautiful and meaningful.† The thrill of creating something new, something original, something remarkable, surged through me.† I knew that it would be challenging but that was half the fun.

Exploring the vast depths of the internet to learn something new, delving into reference books to find a new technique, and wracking my own brain for a unique solution are all parts of the challenge.† Sometimes this challenge can be overwhelming; every dedicated programmer has experienced this: complete, exhausting frustration.† Yet, the beautiful masterpieces that bud from this process are worth every headache, sleepless night, and caffeine induced tremor.

It has always amazed me how beautiful, and elegantly simple, something so complex as a computer can be.† Years and years of researching and experimenting are contained in a tiny microchip only a few centimeters long.† This fact alone is unbelievably impressive.† As I worked on my creation these thoughts crossed my mind, and I concluded that progress is a beautiful thing, which I hoped to be a part of one day.

I neared the end of my work.† Weeks of frustration and agony had passed, but I knew that soon my work would come to fruition and all of my efforts would be worth it.† In a matter of moments I would feel the sensational fulfillment that surely accompanies the end of the creation of any work of art.† I knew that this would be the first of many, and I couldn’t wait to get started on my next piece.† With the final stroke of a brush, I pushed the compile button, and my masterpiece was complete.

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It is really tough to talk to high school students about sex.† Just thinking about it is risky business.† First of all, it’s embarrassing to talk about private parts, it’s uncomfortable to think that a 16-year-old might be having sex, and most of all, it’s just plain awkward.† When I decided to talk about sex with everyone I knew, I viewed those as slight drawbacks.† Last February I started a project to educate everyone I could about Human Papilloma Virus, a sexually transmitted infection that can lead to cervical cancer.† I distributed pamphlets, made bulletin boards, gave presentations, spoke on a radio show, appeared in the newspaper, and spent 25 minutes answering questions at each Central High School sexual education class.† By the time I presented my project to the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Association, I could talk about sex to just about anyone, including the judges.

The Herbert Hoover Uncommon Student Award is a scholarship program available only to Iowa high school juniors.† Students are chosen based on their ability to identify a problem in their community and develop and implement a plan to solve that problem, or at least improve it.† When I learned that a common virus is the cause of cervical cancer, I couldn’t believe that that fact wasn’t common knowledge.† Choosing this topic was easy, but also risky.† 110 students from all over the state of Iowa vied for 15 Uncommon Student Awards and only three would receive $5,000.00 scholarships at the end of their project.† My concern was that the selection committee would view my project as too risquÈ, seeing me as an advocate for teen sex.† I was encouraged when I was selected as one of the Uncommon Students, and I have spent eight months working on my project.

My goal was to inform everyone I could about the connection between HPV and cervical cancer, and the use of routine pap smears to detect precancerous changes.† While I did not receive one of the $5,000.00 scholarships, and the judges were in fact concerned that my project could advocate sex, I did reach my goal, and I continue to work on my project.† I hope that my project empowers others to investigate ideas, and to talk about important issues even if they are risky business, because in the end what matters is the impact.† What matters is making a difference.

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To become an engineer you must be good at many things.† When I tell people I wish to become an engineer, they respond, “You must really enjoy math” or “So you’re good at science?”† While these engineer archetypes do apply to me, they ignore my most important skill.† Never has someone responded, “An engineer? You must like breaking things.”

It’s not so much that I like breaking things, as that I am good at it.† You see: I am an expert destructionist.† This is not a label for which I strive; indeed I have suffered my fair share of scolding in its pursuit.† My ability has, however, facilitated the most important part of my education.

I started my training young when I executed the classic baseball thru basement window experiment.† As I grew, so did my talent.† When I was nine, I exploded a glass-measuring cup while boiling water on the stove (in my defense, Pyrex is a sixth-grade subject).† These early manifestations of my talent were often crude and seldom yielded more than a harsh blow to my quarterly earnings.†

My discovery of the computer began to turn my talent into something more useful.† Here, I could word process, play games, research, and calculate. I could also destroy.† I crashed my first computer when I was thirteen, having discovered the inner workings of Windows, as well as the ease with which they are deleted.† This time, though, I found myself in a new situation.† Since I broke it, I was going to have to fix it.†

I did fix it, and through successive breakings, I managed to become quite proficient in computers.† But still my appetite for destruction (sorry Axl) remained.† Why should I, Andy the Demolisher, stop at glass and computers?† Surely my talents were greater? They were, and I spent several years breaking bikes, electronics, machines; little was safe from my pursuit.† And all of these things I had to learn how to fix.

At this point in my crusade to rid the world of all things orderly, the most extraordinary thing happened.† One day I awoke, and having nothing better to do, I took it upon myself to create a trebuchet.† A weekend later, my friends and I stood in my backyard admiring our newly crafted creation.† Here was a machine that could destroy windows from a hundred yards away, but even more importantly- here was a machine that I had built without breaking anything at all.† Somehow, sometime, somewhere, and completely unintentionally, creation had been born of destruction.

It is my potential to create that I hope to expand at Tufts University.† Somewhere within me a destroyer still dwells, but he has turned his talents away from mayhem in favor of assisting the new creator that has begun to wake.† Through destruction I have learned creation, and although I may still have to break an item or two on occasion, know that it is only done so that I might later create of it.†

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The Professor Disappeared

The culmination of his existence stared back at him from his wooden desk.

Sin(4π/3) + cos(π/6) and divide that by 360 and graph that as a curve, no wait, it’s not supposed to be a hyperbola…

He couldn’t focus.

The numbers weren’t moving – logically they could not – but they were dancing nonetheless. Mocking him from their faux-stationary positions on the page. It was his job to manipulate them. Strangulate their size ten Times New Roman throats until they did exactly what he asked of them - it was his job to make them stay still. Soon, it would be his job to teach others how to master the art of numbers. An Engineering Professor: well educated and well paid. Through the blurred mental images of parametric graphs, he finally reached an answer. Zero. None. Zip. “What kind of solution is Zero?,” he thought.

His eighth year of higher education. His twenty-second year of school. His twenty-seventh year alive. Twenty-seven years alive and he was just getting to the life part. He had accomplished everything and nothing. Though he knew tons of numbers, countless theorems, and had memorized millions of equations, what did he really know about anything else? How was he supposed to teach if he knew so little?

Zero. Math is the only subject in which Zero exists. In the real world, there’s always something there. Nothing is a fallacy, invented by those who want more.

His eyes wandered with his mind. He glanced towards the clock. Fifteen minutes left, but his work was already complete. He ran his pencil over the already written assignment, just to make sure. Finally he gathered his things. Each step was gentle and slow as he drifted towards the desk at the front of the room, eyes still fixed upon the once-stark-white assessment.† The professor’s eyes never met his at all. Suddenly, the professor in him was gone. He placed the test on the heavy mahogany surface. His final finale finally finished.††

He breathed a sigh of relief and anxiety, and looked toward the door. It was a walkway he had been in and out of too many times to count. He glanced around the classroom, realizing for the first time in eight years that he was not ready to stand before it. With a gentle push on the doorknob, he left for the last time, and took his first steps into the world. He had a lot to learn.

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I’ve grown up loving numbers. In elementary school, I witnessed with wide eyes, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division; later on, I met more numerical applications with sophisticated names like “algebra”, “geometry”, and “calculus.” Since then, numbers pried open infinite worlds of fresh mathematical concepts, nudged me out of intellectual ruts, and coaxed me to greater levels of calculated excellence. Numbers and I have always been best buddies, spending a significant amount of time together in the domain of the classroom, but only recently did I uncover the full range of their abilities.

This summer, I discovered Sudoku, an out-of-the-classroom approach to mathematical application. Fascination! The game of just nine basic numbers holds an infinity of order, pattern, and magic. Believing that all good things must be shared, I made it my summer goal to tell the whole world of the game that stole my heart.

Of course, I started with those closest: my immediate family. My sister and mother were the first beneficiaries. They immediately warmed up to the game; in fact, it is with great pride that I can affectionately call them: “Sudoku monsters.”

My aunt was a little harder to teach. You see, she’s deaf and at age 49, has never been to school or learned conventional sign language. Her difficulty was not so much grasping the technical aspects of Sudoku, but the spirit of the game. I can teach numbers, and numerical symbols, but nothing I learned in school – neither formula nor method – taught me to how to share happiness or convey enjoyment. Yet the mysterious power that made me fall in love with numbers in the first place did not fail me. When the unexpected, the incalculable happened – when she could finally see the magic I saw – my heart overflowed with delight.

This unprecedented joy I felt could only be explained by the fact that I had experienced a sweet victory outside of the world of academia. Perhaps, learning outside school doesn’t come as easily as learning in the classroom, this success outside seems altogether sweeter and more rewarding. Book learning, however valuable, is just the first step. To communicate with others, to have compassion – those have no substitutes. I learned an important lesson: it is not what I know, but how I apply skills and how I share love that truly matters.

My brief summer romance with Sudoku took my relationship with numbers to a dimension previously unexplored: what brought me merit in the classroom is now a fundamental theorem of relationships. I still love mathematics, now perhaps more than ever, but how can I place a value on happiness, fascination, satisfaction, and the bodies that encumber these emotions? People are worth an infinite value and while my math education has endpoints, the power of numbers is without bounds.

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My Ancient Love

I will never understand the origins of my passion for all things ancient and mythological, Greek and Roman. By the time I entered the third grade, I knew all the famous stories from Greek and Roman mythology and a few lesser known ones as well.† I wanted to climb Mount Olympus, to soar with Icarus, to face Hades with Orpheus and Persephone alike. But as I approached middle school, traditional education crowded out my childhood passion. My fascination with all things mythical was forced to sit in the back of the room, elbowed out by the study of more contemporary history.† Not one of my middle school classes fed my hunger for legend, and no modern war or political struggle could ever captivate my imagination as did the battles and struggles of my favorite mythic heroes.

High school arrived, filled with European and United States history; my only taste of mythology came from English class when allusions would crop up in a soliloquy here, or a sonnet there.† I fully relished these opportunities to feel like an authority on the subject, loving to explain any given myth to any classmate who had the misfortune of never having heard of Leda or Jove. But these momentary and sporadic indulgences in my secret passion did not satisfy me.† I hoped that a senior elective philosophy course, Myth, Dream, and Ritual, might at long last reunite me with my lost muse—I left the course sorely disappointed, after focusing only on the theories of Joseph Campbell, and on the traditional path of the mythical hero.†

I did not leave this course entirely bereft however: from it, I learned the breadth of applications that this seemingly random and irrelevant passion truly has to offer.† I learned that by studying my favorite childhood myths at greater depths and with keener analysis, I could hope to understand the cultural and societal implications of each story, and to begin to recognize the parallels between the lives of my favorite heroes, the lives of their ancient contemporaries, and the lives of my own contemporaries.† People in today’s society could learn a great deal from the lessons of the past.† All of us have our own twelve labors to complete—and maybe all we need is a Hercules to inspire us to embrace and complete our tasks with dignity and aplomb.

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