College Admission Essays: Covers a Long Period of Time Essay Example

My love of math started in third grade. At school there was, in addition to a science lab, a math lab. While other kids played softball, my friends and I sat on the floor of the math lab playing with tangrams (small, colored, polygonal blocks). We didn’t need softball; math lab was playtime. The ordinary pieces could all fit together infinite ways to make anything from a big, multicolored square to a complex symmetrical snowflake. I still have a Polaroid of my third grade tangram masterpiece of the snowflake variety. Math became only more interesting to me throughout elementary school. My parents soon caught on, and during long car rides they used to give me strings of numbers to add, subtract, multiply, and divide to keep me from getting bored and asking if we were there yet. In fourth, fifth, and sixth grades I participated in the elementary school math Olympiads, and my after-school hours were sometimes devoted to discussing a problem or idea with my teacher.

In junior high, math was put on the back burner with my discovery of nail polish and hair dryers, but not for long. When I got to my new school in tenth grade, my interest was rapidly revived by Mr. W., my geometry teacher. He taught with an unsurpassable amount of enthusiasm and love for the subject, and the inspiration he evoked in me spread to my other classes too. My essay writing improved dramatically when I learned the techniques of geometrical proofs, and my ability to visualize molecular models in chemistry also got much better when I learned rudimentary trigonometry. When the math curricula from my old and new schools did not line up, Mr. W. was the one who supported my decision to take the tenth grade math course, Algebra II and Trig, in addition to ninth grade Geometry. This arrangement was normally against school policy, and taking two honors math courses was a load, but one I was quite happy to bear. In fact, it reconfirmed my love of math.

In my pre-calculus class during my junior year, all sorts of new doorways opened up. There is so much more out there than I ever dreamed of, and I am thoroughly excited to study as much of it as possible; I am doing an independent study in math this year, in addition to taking calculus. Studying art history in my junior year gave me a whole new outlet for my love of math. Renaissance art, one of my favorite genres, is firmly based on geometry. Its philosophy, as well as its aesthetic appearance, is highly organized and deals with several versions of the dichotomy of earth and heaven, including body and soul, and, to my delight, square and circle. My favorite music is quite mathematical; I love Bach and Mozart, and the idea of repeating modified themes is infinitely pleasing to me. My fascination with the mathematical permeates my other studies.

Many of my interests trace back to my love of math, not just as a subject, but as a way of thinking. To do math, one has to have a sense of organization as well as the ability to figure out something from a set of conditions. Whatever I do in life, I will always be thinking of an equation to go with it.