Ugh. It’s Amber. Again. I scoot away as far as I can from her as she sits at my table, cafeteria lunch tray in hand. “Why does she have to sit with us? Why can’t she just go sit with her ‘other’ friends and helpers?” It’s the eighth grade, and I want to seem as cool as possible. I pull my backpack closer to myself, away from Amber. Special education girl...
The havoc created in the Emergency Room would make any weak individual wilt under the pressure. It was my first summer in the Emergency Room at Harbor UCLA Medical Center, which receives patients with every sort of circumstances from gunshot wounds to level I trauma patients. One of my first missions was to take a patient from the ER up to the Renal Transplant Unit (RTU) on the fourth floor. Being a huge fan of the television series House, this task seemed remarkably simple compared to the complex diagnostic procedures doctors routinely go through...
From my earliest memories, I have always loved animals and the outdoors. As I got older, I became more aware of the issues that surrounded the environment and wanted to do my part to promote these important issues to those around me. My natural inclination has always been to be respectful of our environment and practical about its use. I love leftovers, thrift shops, and walking everywhere...
As winter comes around every year, people find themselves getting into the Christmas spirit. My way of spreading Christmas cheer was helping my varsity baseball team sell Christmas trees as a fundraiser. One rather cold night when nobody felt like working, a customer walked onto our field and handed us two hundred dollars. He asked for no trees. This man said that he wanted to donate as many trees as two hundred dollars could buy to local families who needed them. This immediately struck me as a very generous way to help others in the community...
I vividly recall throwing up before each and every one of my piano recitals as a child. My parents would drag me kicking and screaming into whatever venue the concert was to be held at, and run to catch up with me on my way out. And the recital hall wasn’t the only place I was afflicted with stage fright...
We met in 2006—the year Dick Cheney shot some guy in the face, Twitter was launched, and Pluto was declared to no longer be a planet—at a SkateWorld birthday party. Rosa Kwak was hyper competitive, overly ambitious, loud, and sometimes crude: in other words, everything I was not. I was never a star in school, or in anything for that matter. After a one season sports stint in soccer I felt overwhelmed and inferior...
Interdisciplinary learning rules my life. As a Da Vinci student, I am challenged every day to see issues from different perspectives through the interconnected English and History curriculum that my school offers. My most profound experience with interdisciplinary learning landed me on stage, delivering a speech in front of my classmates, Congressman John Garamendi, and twenty veterans about how a humanities project changed my views on war...
I am curious about everything. There is nothing more exciting to me than learning new material. From the moment that I discovered Scripps College one year ago, I have loved Scripps and its academic philosophy of educating women from diverse backgrounds through engaging discussion and participation in a community of women that care deeply about each other...
Everyone has a bit of Peter Pan in them. No one wants to grow too old to Trick or Treat, hang from the monkey bars at the playground, or buy meals from the Kids’ Menu. Adults always reminisce about the “good old days,” back when they were still children with no worries in life. Whether it is through a series of gradual steps or all at once, we all go through that transition some time in our lives. For me, that shift began on April 30, 2011..
I have been interested in health and nutrition since seventh grade, when after six months of testing, I deduced that my reoccurring vertigo and migraines stemmed from a sensitivity to certain preservatives. Over the years I have become fascinated by the correlation between what I consume and how it affects me. When I came across the concept of genetically modified organisms, or GMO’s, I immediately began to question their impact...
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