Reflect on a time when you challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again? The box arrived on my porch the day I was born. It came neatly wrapped in brown parchment; the top was closely fitted to the square edges. I matured uninformed of its existence, and grew up as a typical girl. My parents described me as fearless: the first one to jump in the deep end of the...

Pola Dobrzynski Honors Essay Late in the winter of my fifteenth year, I experienced two journeys; one, from my home in New York to South America –and the other into self-awareness. My parents are both immigrants to the United States. My mother is from Argentina, my father from Poland. I have an intense love of both my parents’ cultures, and the Hispanic culture has always stood out in my mind as the polar opposite of American culture, in terms of...