Finding a Cause Adrenaline shot down my spine as I raised my hand “ Senator, Is it not implied in the constitution that there is separation of church and state?” The room grew silent, each second lasting a millennium. “Why don’t you find it yourself?” he said as he tossing a small, thin book my way (clearly I had walked into a carefully laid trap.) The crowd around me grew annoyed with the antics of this particular senator as I...

6. I’ve always had a strong desire to push the envelope. I am not afraid to speak my mind, not afraid to make the personal political, and not afraid to express myself in ways that may make others uncomfortable. This mantra stems not from a need for attention but a need to better myself and society. I can think of no stronger example of this than my relationship with my favorite poem, Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. For me reading Howl...

" The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence."- The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath I was once told that there's a kind of courage in shutting up, that the proper way to be a woman involved less hand raising, and more hand holding. I once felt that my natural outspokenness and ambition made me different from some societal expectation of the feminine. I had truly perceived several of the sexist double standards that...

When I first visited Penn I was struck by the beauty and energy of the school. Many of the campus's I had previously visited where quiet and showed few signs of student involvement. At Penn I was surrounded by a buzz of students rushing to classes, shouting about activities on Locust Walk, and even taking the time to greet a prospective student. I began to picture myself as a Penn undergraduate and fit Penn's facilities into my life goals. The...

My state had less qualified applicants than a coastal state. My...