SAMS Essay
For as long as I can remember, I have always been considered to be weird. Until recently, I thought that this was a horrible thing, secluding myself from others during most of my middle school years. In the past year and a half, I have met others that have also been considered “weird”, which has assisted me in embracing my weirdness. No longer do I hinder myself from what I truly enjoy, but instead, I am now more eager than ever to discover what other talents are hidden behind my weirdness.
From the surface, I may seem like the typical “book nerd.” I am a member of almost all of the science, math, and academic clubs at my school, and most of my time spent out of school is devoted to school related subjects, like robotics. I have a small group of friends with similar interests and activities, but I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a social butterfly, if so, I’m still in the cocoon. Nonetheless, I like to take my in-school experiences a step further and continue to explore at home, which I think is the major factor that separates me from the typical “book nerd”. For example, in my Multimedia Productions course last semester, we studied PHP and Information Architecture for most of the semester. In my free time, I would do PHP tutorials on my own at home so that I could get ahead, and then at school, I could apply my knowledge better to the actual assignments. It also allowed me more time to participate in the Information Architecture portions, which I enjoyed more than coding. Generally, I believe that book knowledge is not what’s most significant, but instead, the aspiration to gain knowledge, and then most importantly the application of learned skills and techniques.
Ever since taking my first year of German last year, I have become intrigued with languages and how they are derived. After quickly noticing the similarities between the German language and the English language, I was able to see the big picture in how most languages fit together. Learning German made me pay closer attention to English grammar, and I began to see all the technicalities and patterns within the language, which I still find interesting, even though English is my first language, and I’ve known these simple grammar rules for most of my life. The summer following my first year in German, I enrolled in a Latin I course online to further quench my newfound interest in languages and linguistics. The first few lessons in Latin provided exactly what I needed to better visualize and understand the correlation between the languages. Once German II started in the Spring semester, with half a year of Latin in mind, I was almost able to figure out “new” concepts of the language before reading the explanation in textbook. At that point, I almost wanted to switch my career plans to working towards becoming a linguist, as I was so fascinated. Just after 2 ˝ language courses, I have developed such a fixation with linguistics that I plan on continuing to study language as long as I can, continuing with Latin and German, and hopefully adding Spanish and an oriental language within the next few years. With knowledge of as many languages as possible, I feel as if I am more culturally diverse, which is beneficial in improving my communication skills.
Going back to the “weirdness” theme, being a techie also significantly adds to my weirdness factor. I actively participate in robotics on my school’s FIRST (For Inspiration of Science and Technology) Robotics team, in addition to National Technical Honor Society, and SECME, which is a science, math, and engineering competition, all part of the my school’s Emerging Computer Technology magnet. Although I am specifically well versed in robotics, I am interested in ALL aspects of technology. Sometimes, it’s even disappointing that there isn’t enough time to learn about everything that I am interested in. Many would consider one with such versatile skills and interests to be an “extreme weirdo”, but if you’re me, it’s normal!
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