Common App Essay Essay - Cornell University

How I created a Higgs Boson in my refrigerator! The photograph in my hands stares blankly back at me. It was a picture of my friends and I all trying to paint something, with chaos everywhere and many upset or distracted faces. The striking monochrome backdrop soothed my sore eyes, focusing their attention to the center. In the middle of the masterpiece rests a splash of color - me smiling ear-to-ear extremely satisfied with my masterpiece. I muse. The picture was much more than just a magnificent edit. In many ways, it was a metaphor for the person I am. From the rural streets of Calcutta to Cupertino, from Cupertino to San Jose, from San Jose all the way back to Calcutta, my life's been quite a rollercoaster. I think it's safe to say that I've seen, as Dickens says, "the best of times" and the "worst of times". Admittedly, moving from San Jose to Calcutta was tough for an immature fifth grader, but I took life as it came. Each of those cities, together with their lifestyle, beliefs and people are responsible for painting my canvas, both in eloquent grayscale and a dash of bold color. The grayscale. One definition of adapt is "to cooperate with change". How did I adapt to my erratic lifestyle? I got along with just about everybody. It was initially a superficial necessity, but in time it steadily sunk into what I am today. In the words of my kindergarten teacher, "Everybody's your friend". Simply put, I just don't believe in bad people. The world is just a massive conglomeration of different perspectives – what's good to some is bad to others. Everybody's essentially pure at heart and being aloof to them is quite inexcusable. Be it [name], whose English vocabulary is hardly five hundred words, or [name], who likely read 5 books yesterday, there is literally nobody I don't gel with. Modern society likes to segregate people into distinct stereotypes; it's like the caste system all over again. It fills me with a certain sense of pride to defy the social norms. If you stepped into the hustle and bustle of [my school's classroom], everybody has their own group huddle – very literally 'friend circles'. I'm so fortunate that I could barge into any of these huddles and be greeted with the same effusive welcome. Every single stereotype, be it the let's-solve-physics-problems-all-day group or the please-let-me-pass-this-class group, the what-party-are-you-going-to-tonight kids or even the I-don't-fit-in group, everybody suits me just as well. If you asked my friends, they'd account my affability to my ability to talk about practically anything in the world. I can suit up and discuss Stephen Hawking's theories and Beethoven's symphonies, sit in casuals arguing Michael Jackson or The Beatles or even lie around in boxers reminiscing Spongebob Squarepants and Pokemon. From banal Bollywood flicks to Alfred Hitchcock, from Stephen King to Charlotte Brontë, from Eminem to Miles Davis, from Audrey Hepburn to Christina Ricci, I truly appreciate them all. My eclectic perspectives dissolve the fine line between the cool and the uncool to an azeotropic mixture of different. To me, this different isn't distinctive. It's many shades of grey. The color. My distinct shade – that single tinge which singularly stands out amidst the chasm of monochrome – is my love of everything numbers. When I first moved to Cupertino, I was a language-less outcast. As a lonely kindergartener who couldn't speak English, I found escape in Mathematics, the language of numbers. An eternal love was born. Math was my escape from any hardship. I learnt algebra by the third grade and was on to simultaneous equations by the fifth. The joy of solving a fascinating problem is difficult to describe; you feel like Bruce Almighty with "I Got the Power" playing in the background. In the ninth grade, when I was named the State Topper in the McMillan Mathematics Competition, it grew into a sport. Over the years, I got better and better. Fortune, however, denied me a shot at the Olympiads. [edit: I literally actually went to national olympiads a few weeks after I wrote this essay] As cliché as it might sound, Math changed the way I look at life. It was never about the grades. It was about the beauty of sitting in a room for 6 hours with pen and paper just pondering over a problem, gazing at the ceiling. It might be everyone's textbook definition of gray, but to me, solving problems is the color that gives me joy and purpose. In fact, numerophilia, unlike its phobic counterpart, isn't even a word. Go figure. I love people. I blend in with them all, yet hold my own. I could dwell on my theories on piezoelectric flooring, but still be best friends with the boy who couldn't make sense of calculus. But numbers are what make me tick. I am the amiable mathematician. I am all the greys with that splatter of color. Oh, and I almost forgot about the Higgs boson I created in my refrigerator; that was just to grab your attention.