I’m an accidental cheerleader. I’ve been planning my life since the first grade, and football games were never part of “the plan.” But beyond the embarrassingly short skirts, sparkly bows and exceedingly loud pop music, it turns out cheer is excellent practice for the life I hope to lead. In first grade, I planned to conduct clinical research to store human memory on USB’s. I wanted to be a doctor like my grandfather. Within 7 years of landing...

I hope to make films, and touch people’s hearts, act, write and direct, then screen my art! A film studies major plus international relations, I hope to craft stories like Beasts of No Nation. Engaged on campus, I'd join Dartmouth cheer, live in Chinese Language House and shuō Hànyǔ all year! Become fluent in Spanish on an FSP, use Sophomore Winter to intern for TV. With Arabic fluency from an LSA+, first-hand conversations with real refugees, would inspire...

My first memories are from Tacoma, WA. There, my friends’ parents were privates deployed to Iraq and my babysitter adopted us into her family, taking me shopping at the Commissary. I learned love, not blood makes families. In kindergarten, we moved to Normandy Park, a city of 6,000 where extended families live next door to one another. I yearned for the breadth of my cousins’ LA, NYC and DC. Freshman year, my mom and I moved to Palo Alto and lived...

July in Seattle It’s July in Seattle: the sun sets so slow on Puget Sound that you leave time behind. As you paddle, your kayak cuts a trail. You stop and the water heals itself, once again as smooth as glass. The ocean’s so clear that the twenty feet down looks like it’s only two. The bottom seems close enough to touch. Purple starfish laze around on the black rocks as palm-sized crabs scuttle about. Jellyfish caught...

I believe in creative intellect. When I was nine, there was some lavender ice cream in my family’s freezer––wonderfully intense, but too sweet and creamy to eat alone. I wanted to balance it out with something fresh, like... ice… but you can’t put ice on ice cream…. oh! What about Dentyne Ice… mint gum...MINT!...mint...mint..mint ice?? No…. Mint syrup? No, no… that wouldn’t be fresh. Ah! What better way to balance out something...