I always thought of science as something people in lab coats did, they always seemed so sterile and boring, but then I found out how cool science really is. For example, humans are made of cells are made of atoms. Humans are alive, atoms are not. All women alive right now descended from a Mitochondrial Eve. We all have about one billion atoms courtesy of one William Shakespeare in us right now. There are so many things to learn about...

I am not smarter than most of the people who applied to the schools that I did. I didn't take AP courses during high school, and I wasn't even in a brick and mortar school, I went to high school online. So what really set me apart was my...