College Admissions Essay: I Love That Changed My Life

I am a scholar and a fixer. Learning new things and solving problems are two things I find myself devoting the majority of my brain power to, not because I have to-- but because those are things I genuinely enjoy. My heart (and my brain) call me to science and math because they speak equally to my curiosity about the world and to the analytical side of me. The pursuit of knowledge never stops, not for me at least. The more I learn about the world the more I realize I do not know nearly anything, which just makes me crave to know more. And with more knowledge, comes more problems in my wheelhouse which I can solve. There is something so uniquely soothing about finally figuring out a problem; whether it is the solution to a complex mathematical problem or just the answer to a simple “why is this happening?” question. It is a euphoric high I could spend my life chasing. I yearn to understand everything I possibly can about the world. My love of science stems from the fact that we can use it to understand (almost) all of what we see around us.

One area I am extremely passionate about is outer space. Since I was a child, I have always looked at the stars with a sense of awe, wondering “what could possibly be out there?” Still, I retain that sense of wonder when I read about new advancements and discoveries. The unfathomable vastness of space never ceases to knock me off my feet. One particular point of fascination is black holes: massive, unrelenting voids which we still understand little about. One reason I am drawn to them (aside from their inescapable pull), is because we know so little, there is so much to discover, there is so much to explore. Space is full of unsolved problems and unexplained phenomena, just begging for order to be extracted from their