Picking up the burrito bowl I'd just ordered from Chipotlé, I sat down next to a girl I'd befriended earlier and a boy who I'd just met, and tuned into their conversation. "Well, neither charge symmetry nor parity symmetry exists, because of weak interactions." Wow, what light dinner conversation. I was curious, but only managed to catch a few snippets. "Hold on," I requested. "Can you explain to me what charge-parity symmetry is?" "Sure," my friend Michelle said. "Charge symmetry...

"Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea." - Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead. The quote summarizes the theme of Rand's story about the struggles of an architect. The protagonist clung to his perspectives about architecture even as experts demeaned his ideas and his peers stole them, completely violating artistic integrity and spirit. In the end, he achieved success by staying true to himself rather than conforming to the standards of his profession. Like the protagonist in Rand's story, I...

​I walk out of Dance of the Photons, my first-year physics seminar, animatedly discussing Zeilinger’s book with a fellow classmate. As we talk about entanglement and teleportation among other mysteries, I can't help thinking that I have everything I could ever want academically at Caltech. I love science, and I marvel at the mind-bending mysteries of our universe both on the smallest, subatomic scales and the grandest scales of the entire cosmos. In this class, I am able to...

I sat down to complete a writing assignment for my astronomy class. “Read a pre-1960 article that discusses a theory of solar system formation,” the prompt read. “Discuss the evidence used to bolster it, and any problematic facts mentioned by the author.” As I began reading an article about Kenneth Edgeworth’s theory, I paid careful attention to his evidence and reasoning. I stepped into his shoes and pondered the problem from his perspective. Seeing his explanation through his eyes...

I typed away eagerly on my computer. Right before my eyes, I watched the story of a mother manipulating her computer-savvy son to take over the world come to life. After editing the section I’d just written, I paused and waited. Soon, more sentences appeared on the screen. “‘He opened the attachment, which contained a meme. Then, his computer crashed,’” wrote one friend, composing the next sentence. We fleshed out our characters, manipulating the scenes until they coherently formed...