The Significance of August 24th, 2006 Six years ago, several bigots at the International Astronomical Union, armed with crisp PhDs from prestigious universities and equally crisp suits from equally prestigious clothing lines, decided it was high time to redefine the word “planet,” probably because poor old Webster did not go to Harvard. And so, unsatisfied with demoting their assistants for spilling coffee, the bigots demoted Pluto instead (although whether coffee was involved, I am unsure). Six years ago, I stopped using...

The winters in Colorado get cold, sure, but I wear enough sweaters under my ski jacket. Blizzards occasionally render eyesight useless, but I know how to feel my way down the slope. Oddly enough, it was sunny the day the weather kept me in. Sunny and windy. Too windy for the sky chairs to run, and thus too windy for me to ski. Unfortunately, I quickly realized it was too windy for me to do anything, mainly because I only...

Dear Roomie I could ramble on about mundane interests, of which I have many I assure you, or contemplate future career plans, of which I have considerably less, but we have all year for that. Instead, I feel obligated to warn you of the unfortunate mess you will spend most of your nights in (I recommend studying in the library). To be fair, I am not a particularly disorganized person, not on teenager standards anyway. I simply need to bring...

I ate my first tomato when I was ten. I boarded my first flight, saw my first Bulgarian village, and ate my first tomato. I say this because the supermarket seems to provide not tomatoes but round containers of water lightly flavored with tomato juices, whereas this tomato was tomato all the way through. Three years ago, perhaps to save us a trek to Bulgaria whenever we craved tomatoes, perhaps to keep busy during her retirement, my mom brought the...

Stanford's acceptance strategies seem to differ from the Ivies. The kids from my high school who got accepted to the Ivies were the ones with the highest grades, the most...

The co-op system at Stanford is relatively large (7...

I would study for the SAT by just taking hella...

I did not - I looked into one...

I was not deferred, but my twin sister was. When I was accepted,...