Throughout elementary and middle school I struggled with mathematics. Every day I walked to math class dreading the new concepts I would face that day. I spent hours stressing over math homework, baffled by how anyone could manipulate these numbers and equations with ease and understanding, let alone pleasure. In this aspect I think I was like many people, children and adults, in our society: I thought math was this dark, impenetrable fortress armed with deadly variables and remorseless operations....

The University of Chicago satisfies my yearning for a certain academic curriculum I feel I would not find elsewhere. The University of Chicago offers interdisciplinary and integrated courses in an excellent core curriculum which I believe I would not find in another academic climate. Academic variation is very important to my own personal educational philosophy, as I understand the dangers of academic specialization. The University of Chicago offers a diversification of academia in an intense academic climate which I feel...

I remember the day I first realized how much joy the academic experience gives me. I was at work over a particularly long and complicated trigonometric simplification problem. As I finished the last simplification-transforming sinx over cosx into tanx-I was overcome with the pure beauty of not only mathematics, but also of intellectual activity. Words cannot describe the feeling of excitement I obtain from the pursuit of knowledge. Solving a math problem, completing a titration, reading a history book-each of...

hard working,...

I would take with...

I would...

Habitat...

Big...