“ὦ φίλοι, Οὖτίς με κτείνει δόλῳ οὐδὲ βίηφιν.” Friends, Nobody is killing me with guile and not with strength (Homer, Odyssey, 9. 408). This was the first Greek sentence that I ever read. I had chosen to take Ancient Greek on a whim; I had always loved mythology and with the start of high school wanted to try something new. When I walked into the room filled with upperclassmen, I began to doubt my decision. They were budding Latinists while I could not define declension. Then Mr. Kip put this...

This was used as my supplemental essay for Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and Dartmouth

Two years ago, sitting on a ski lift with my father, I turned to look back at a prosthetic leg lying in the snow with the boot and ski still attached. Years before, we had taken to the bunny slope together at the ages of fifty and four respectively. He never liked skiing, but he endured the icy conditions, and hazardous speed demons for me. It seemed to grow on him though; on lift rides we would laugh about his...