At the tender age of six I didn’t understand why my grandma wasn’t like other grandmas. I was mortified when my friends mocked the way she talked and acted, and I hated the fact that the painful truth of my ethnicity could not be concealed. Why couldn’t she speak English? Why did she ferment smelly soybeans instead of baking cookies? In a desperate effort to hide all traces of my heritage, I began to teach my grandma...

I had probably cried in his arms over a thousand times. My brother’s soft whispers of comfort and soothing smell of pine could not fill the hole in my heart. The air was thick with tension and fear, and it was evident that neither of us could do much more than offer solace in silence, afraid to speak our thoughts into existence. My mother burst into the kitchen and splashed a glass of water onto my face. “Die,” she...

If students were stars, then the Core would be what forms the grand constellation that is Columbia. It is a bridge that connects the leaders of the next generation through cultured intellect, a bastion of worldly scholarship. As the academic hub of New York, Columbia is filled with dreamers from a broad range of backgrounds and perspectives on the world. But the Core and its texts are what gift students a common ground and a launchpad for academic discourse, and...

“Hajimemashite. Watashitachi no gakkou he youkouso.” Nice to meet you. Welcome to our school. I sputtered my first words of Japanese to the new exchange student, not having any idea what the individual parts meant; I was just reading the romanization on Google Translate and hoping for the best. But when she grinned from ear to ear and thanked me, her eyes lighting up like Christmas, my existing love and curiosity for language grew. The fact that I could provide...

My soft, unworked hands enveloped the calloused palms of a girl who had endured famine, lost her family, and crossed the freezing Tumen River for her freedom. Despite the adversity she had faced, she did not pound her fists on the ground for revenge—her revenge was gaining the knowledge that had been stolen from her. My moments with Yooyoung, a North Korean refugee, planted in me seeds of awareness. We bonded through broken English and never-ending games of charades...

I took my first steps toward my dream of traveling the world in the summer before my junior year when I went on exchange to the historical city of Valladolid, Spain. I walked the dimly lit streets in a flowy black dress at midnight for my daily fix of tapas, welcomed the exciting arrival of Sahrawi refugee children, and connected deeply with minds unlike my own through late-night, heartfelt conversations in Spanish. After this valuable global experience, I was moved...

Boston University is where I could go beyond the borders of my education. With the school’s extensive undergraduate research opportunities, I would be able to pursue my passions and advance society’s knowledge. I am especially interested in participating in the Language Production, Perception, and Learning research at the PAMLab to uncover the mysteries of language acquisition pertaining to perception and developmental differences. Moreover, as someone who is passionate about cultural understanding and global interconnectedness, I plan to take...