At the end of third grade, a major change occurred in my life. I left Seoul, South Korea, where I had lived since I was born, to attend a school in Australia. As my mother later explained, she chose to send me there because she was dismayed by the burden and pressure the Korean educational system was putting on young Koreans. In Seoul, I spent most of my time after school going to hagwons to learn excelled mathematics. After that,...

Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud, and how does it relate to the person you are? To me, archiving one’s past with transient forms of recollection—such as diaries—undermines the significance of the event. If a memory is worth keeping, the incident should possess the capacity to preserve itself. With such conviction, when I was able to recall every...

Six feet tall, with narrow shoulders and lanky limbs, I may not look like a typical entertainer. Modest and usually not the type to stand out in a group, people often get the impression that I am demure and shy. But I am a performer. I like to sing, I like to act and I like to make people laugh. You will know this the moment you first hear me humming Vienna Teng’s City Hall in the shower or...

I woke up to the loud ringing of my bedroom clock at 6:00 am. My pillow was drenched in cold sweat. The air under my blanket felt humid. My shirt was rolled up to my chest. It seemed as though the heat had become unbearable during the night and I could not resist exposing my flesh to the cooler air outside. It was show night. After countless rehearsals for the past two months, our school play was ready for performance. I...

Looking through Duke’s website, I found a sentence that sparked my interest in the university: “Let yourself imagine how one of our programs might enhance your academic and personal growth.” And that’s exactly what I did. The range and diversity of opportunities for intellectual and personal growth are seemingly endless at Trinity College and elsewhere in Duke’s vast academia. From the community-based efforts of the Hart Leadership Programs to the personal input of Program II and the...

I have often found myself to be most appreciative of learning when it stirs a deep interest within me—not just to the extent that it induces curiosity, but to the point where I imagine a future in the field. Inarguably, there are numerous ways of satisfying one's hope to understand the world, but I am inclined towards methods that are inherently simple and logical. Physics, in general, attempts to understand the world and its mechanics using numbers and words....

I remember reading in an introductory book for neuroscience: “The brain is the most complex system known to mankind.” I thought to myself, What is it about the brain that makes it so complex? Why study it? Trying to grasp this concept is not as easy as it seems; technically, one must have knowledge of all other complexities in the world, from the mysteries of the universe to the complexities of quantum mechanics, to prove such stance. This summer, I...