The Prime-ary Challenge “You will finish your classes later today,” announced my teacher as we heard the sound of sirens that pulled us to the windows. “Must be an official, has such a huge escort,” said my classmate, adding a flavor of curiosity to our perplexed emotions. To soothe the atmosphere, I added, “Yeah, one wrong word against them, they’ll take you away.” This is a common Armenian saying, forged during the dictatorial Soviet era that succeeded in oppressing...

Having been exposed to the Armenian education system, based on traditional Soviet teaching methodologies and academic content, for many years, I only received extensive and deep theoretical knowledge but lacked practicality. Entering the IB Diploma Programme, however, opened a new door for me full of new kind of educational adventures and academic opportunities. Never having had an experience of actually applying my theoretical knowledge into the real life, I was granted with the opportunity to conduct a deep research in...

Practising chess has shaped how I think and behave. It made me adopt the game’s mentality and has developed in me the skill of ‘chess thinking’ based on several principles. Chess is all about calculations, which has come to shape how I perceive my own life. Every move in chess should be priorly assessed by considering the possible countermoves your opponent might respond with and all the probable continuations. This thinking has developed into a skill I use when...

There came a time when I had the desire to make a change in others the way the international programme I was studying in and the extracurricular activities I was involved in positively altered me as a person. This was when I decided to establish a TED-Ed Club at our school certified by TED, where students could discuss their ideas on topics of global significance and enhance their public speaking skills. At first, I viewed the club as a means...

Having studied at my school for seven years, I have always been eager to contribute to my school community and satisfied this desire by being socially active. This year, however, I made a much larger impact by being the President of Shirakatsy Parliament, a student-led body with nearly 70 members, aimed at discussing and finding solutions to the school problems. My first step toward making a positive change was identifying the problems present at our school and the creation of respective...

When choosing a university where I wish to study I put a huge emphasis on the potential career growth and enhancement of scholarly knowledge the school could provide me with. I equally valued the extracurricular opportunities available which can to the fullest extent satisfy my aspirations for multilateral inquiry, not constrained by my primary academic subject frame. Thus, my search boiled down to the University of Chicago, which was endowed with its pursuit for academic excellence and extracurricular life. However,...

“Check...Mate!” These are the words I enjoy saying since my early childhood, and from then on, playing chess has been one of the ways I could entertain myself. For many years (and even just before thinking about this prompt, to be honest), I only considered it a means of temporarily escaping the reality and forgetting about the challenges I encounter there. And I was not completely wrong in thinking this way as a single chess match in a day...