I’d always agreed with Mr. Butler during his frequent after-dinner political conversations with my father. As my dad, a staunch Republican, and Terry, a self-declared socialist, debated I would sit on my dad’s lap and defend every point he made. This blind acceptance was short-lived. The older I got, and the more I was exposed to other beliefs, my faith in my parents’ politics was challenged. By Obama’s second term, I vigorously endorsed the “standard liberal position.”...

My first camera was given to me by my godfather on my ninth birthday. The old Olympus OM-1 was dented and scratched, but I loved it. From that day on I was entranced by how the way a shot was framed or filtered could completely change the piece. Throughout high school, I pursued every photography course offered including Senior Thesis Photography. I knew the teacher, Mrs. Tanzman, well, but was nervous to be in a class that required an application...

Upon choosing a sport to play my freshman year, I was immediately intrigued by lacrosse, but my relationship with lacrosse had a rocky start. I showed up to tryouts with a boys’ stick instead of the smaller girls’ stick, and only caught the ball twice, but I returned the next day with the same nervous enthusiasm. By some miracle, I made the varsity team. I’d never had a problem picking up a sport, but the weeks after tryouts were...

Going into my sophomore year, I was looking forward to taking my first AP course in U.S. History, but I had resigned myself to the fact that it was unlikely that Native North American history would be in the curriculum. This was a topic I’d been interested in for several years and that I had spent several weeks studying the summer before while visiting family on the Texas-Oklahoma border. While doing so, I became interested in investigating the...

Despite having two biochemistry majors for parents, I’d always been hopeless in science class: I broke countless beakers and set my polo on fire during a lab in 10th grade. That changed my junior year in classroom B204: my physics class. I remember learning about centripetal force and being amazed that the same force could affect a car making a sharp turn and control the orbit of a planet. The thought that two distant things in the universe could...

I’ve spent the last two years of high school working with Professor Goeman at UCLA researching indigenous gender roles and indigenous maternalism through my school’s Honors Research program. Both years I focused specifically on Cherokee communities and in doing so read a lot of literature on Cherokee history, including a book titled Sustaining the Cherokee Family: Kinship and the Allotment of an Indigenous Nation by Dr. Rose Stremlau. So while visiting a friend who attends Davidson last summer...

When choosing what I wanted to major in college I knew that physics or international relations were the frontrunners. I had seen myself becoming a politician or an international negotiator for years, but when I took physics in my junior year I fell in love with the class. I considered double majoring but found that the majority of schools were either strong in both fields, but discouraged double majoring or had great programs in one area, but had little to...

I have known Matthew since we were four years old and he moved in next door. We even went to elementary school together. Despite this shared background, there are a few things that we’ve never quite been able to agree on, most of them political. As we got older we learned to simply avoid them. One day, while sitting on his roof, we finally stumbled across one debate we couldn’t ignore. Both of our families are from Texas...

While its size and location were what first drew me to SMU, what made me certain I wanted to apply was my visit to campus this summer. I talked with a student, who told me about the Hilltop Scholars program. It wasn’t the existence of an academic honors community that caught my attention, but rather that the program emphasized service in conjunction with the academic rigor. I’ve enjoyed volunteering at the animal shelter and hope to continue service...

While I am used to the diversity of L.A., it wasn’t until I spent a month in a rural town about two hours outside of Manila that I understood how important interactions between people from different backgrounds can be. I stayed with my brother’s godmother and her family and went to work with her son, Renee, who ran the town’s self-sustaining generator. I knew that many places lacked access to a power plant, but I had...