Andrew's Summa Essay

Just ponder for a moment: What would it will be like to have your name in every science magazine? To be remembered as a hero? To be remembered as being clever, ingenious, brilliant, the whole shebang?! Now how would you get there? What would be the first step? I know. First you have to get an extraordinary education. You would have to learn so much that you think your head will explode! How can you do this in a public school? I am applying to Summa so I can be all of the above - clever, ingenious and brilliant. I want to be, I need to be, I have to be!

I have many skills. Organization is a great skill to have and I’m very good at it. I’m a quick learner so that if I get sick I won’t slow down the whole class like other kids would. I also bond well with other students and make friends easily. I’m also friendly and nice because I help people when they need help. Overall I think I’m a great person and I’m applying to Summa so I can learn as much as I can, so I can go down in history!

I love all of the subjects, but what interests me the most are math and science. I enjoy solving challenging puzzles. I want to look under a microscope and see things that I’ve never seen before. Looking at all of this made me ask myself, “Andrew, what job has all of these characteristics?” There is a job where you solve puzzles and look under microscopes, it’s a microbiologist! So, I want to be a microbiologist when I grow up. I want to identify microorganisms and record it in my journal. I want to be remembered by people one million years from now.

To be a microbiologist you have to know two main subjects, math and science. It works out great because those are my two favorite subjects. I like math, because I relish the feeling of a challenge. I also love working with numbers and figuring out new things that you can do with them. I like science because it’s such a broad topic that you can’t possibly learn everything. Is that a challenge? I also like science because it’s interesting how the whole human body functions compared to just a single celled organism. I also like genetics. I like studying mutations that happen to people, like sickle-cell anemia or being color-blind. I want to find something before anyone else has. I want to go down in history, like Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Edison. That’s why I have to learn as much as I can before I get there.

I am applying to Summa because I want to learn and be challenged. In my old school I’m not being challenged and I’m not learning to my full potential. Kids who disrupt learning and crave attention are annoying and waste class time so people like me have less time to learn. My dad always says you want to learn as much as you can now so when you’re applying to a college you will have a greater chance of them accepting you. When I get into a good college, then it will be easier to get funding for experiments. These experiments will make me clever, ingenious and brilliant, which I want to be, need to be, have to be!