Standing for the fourth hour on my sore heels, in the midst of a brightly lit operating room, I sweat like I have just run a marathon. Rows of people watch me stare down at the scratched table, and I feel the burning of their eyes on the back of my neck. Here, in blue and white, with my hair tightly tied back, I feel my most complete. The summer before my senior year, I took a month long trip...

As a bisexual and biracial young woman with varied academic interests, Columbia's diverse and accepting community and promotion of interdisciplinary research appeals to me greatly. I felt an immediate comfort when I stepped onto Columbia's campus. I know this feeling is genuine because of Columbia's student body, who have taken similar stances on feminist issues to my own. When visiting campus, my tour guide continuously described the collaborative spirit at Columbia. She showed us newer buildings in which two of...

I had little money, few plans, and no fear. I had never been to England before. After 24 hours of waiting in airports and flying, I walked out of Heathrow airport to meet an elderly family friend, alone. I would spend a month staying with Avril. I smiled, paid sixty pounds for a taxi , and majored in the unafraid. Daily, I headed to destinations I decided upon the same morning. I went to free or low cost museums, exhibitions, festivals, and...

Being a Jamaican-American Jew from Boston and also a student in an affluent suburban school community has been a unique experience. I am only able to attend *place schools because my father is a firefighter for the town. This makes me an anomaly in this community. My fellow students largely could not tell the difference between cornrows and dreadlocks, and didn’t know that they shouldn’t make racist jokes near me. We are not affluent like many of my...

This is an essay in response to Barnard's question of which woman I would talk to for an hour if I could talk to anyone. Daenerys Targaryen: the first of her name, Queen of Meeren, mother of dragons, and a host of other titles, but most importantly, the one woman I would speak to if given the chance to talk to any woman in history or fiction. Daenerys rises to leader status after her husband dies. At the time she...

After a visit to my school, which I already knew was academically brilliant and well connected, it was how well I got along with my peers and how racially supported I felt that made my decision easy. I also felt that I would not be discriminated against or made to feel awkward about my sexuality, and...

I got three recommendations in total, two women and one man. I chose my AP Chemistry teacher because I felt that was the hardest class I took in high school, at least up to the end of junior year, when it was time to ask for a recommendation. I had struggled just to maintain a B in that class, spending crazy amounts of hours studying and lots of time asking questions to both her and peers.I had also felt out of my depth in that class, filled largely with wealthy white boys and high achieving Asian girls. During the...