“The piranhas won’t come after you as long as you keep swimming!” My bare feet stayed safely planted on the floor of the canoe. If there was one thing that my sixteen year old self remembered from third grade science, it was that las pirañas are the most dangerous species of fish in the Amazon River. The fact that I was in a canoe at all, spending five days in the Amazon jungle, was astounding. For weeks beforehand,...

The summer before sixth grade, I excitedly packed a suitcase and headed into inner city Philadelphia with my youth group- for the longest two weeks of my life. Soccer camp meant running around for three hours a day in a sweltering 104 degrees. Pool time meant getting dunked by hyper-energetic kids with seconds in between to breathe. Tutoring sessions were like playing mental tug-of-war with the wandering attention of the students. Throughout the week, there were too many moments to count...

I am affectionately known among my friends as the one who is “up for anything.” I like to explore with an open mind, which is why I was first attracted to New York University’s interdisciplinary majors and global emphasis. Academically, my current interests lie in linguistics and psychology. NYU not only boasts excellent departments in both fields, but offers the joint major Language and Mind, which perfectly embodies these interests and beyond. Additionally, I was taken with the sheer...

I’ll be honest- the reason I loved learning new languages growing up was because I was good at it. I repeated gibberish-like phrases with startling accuracy and internalized foreign grammar like second nature, dreaming of one day conversing with a native speaker. Growing up bilingual and befriending fellow Rotary Youth Exchange students from all over the world, I’ve encountered dozens of people whose first language was different than mine. Gradually, it dawned on me how essential language is...