The College Application Process: A Reflection
The college application process asks students to really evaluate their beliefs, knowledge, and morals, and distill them down to several defined themes or categories.
For me, those categories were (1) Bulgarian culture, (2) my love of the arts, and (3) my interest in neuroscience/cognitive science and design thinking.
I emphasized different categories for each application, depending on what questions I was asked and what core values the college or university had, but those were generally the characteristics that I felt best represented me. Most of my cocurricular and extracurricular activities fell into those three categories and oftentimes overlapped.
Take "Bulgarian culture", for example.
Being Bulgarian and being surrounded by this amazing group of immigrants has taught me the value of community and compassion and has done so many other things for me that I won't ever be able to eloquently put into words. Bulgarian folk dance, an activity that I participate in solely because I love it, ended up giving me more 'leadership' and 'community service' experiences than clubs and groups like National Honors Society ever would.
Or look at "love of the arts".
Participating in theatre inside and outside of school, creating COMMotion, and annually insisting that I somehow fit an art class into my school schedule (hence this year's independent study that was squeezed into second period), all work nicely in this category.
The one area that was hardest for me to condense was my interest in cognitive science/neuroscience/design thinking.
It was just so multi-faceted and the explanation of how I got into this area was extremely long-winded. After many failed attempts, I did manage to condense my ideas into a few paragraphs.
But I ended up getting lost in those summaries.
I got used to throwing around specific phrases and sentences, repeating them so often for applications and interviews and luncheons that they eventually became memorized.... "the modern classroom environment isn't condusive to learning. Students sit in straight rows, passively taking in information instead of actively participating in the learning process".... "We need to restructure the modern-day classroom into an environment that meets the student's needs when it comes to education, not solely the teacher's".
And while those statements aren't incorrect, they're still summaries. They don't represent the entire range of my beliefs and ideas on these topics.
Sure, I think that a lot of classrooms and teaching styles - especially those geared towards AP classes - don't work for most students. The way classes like that (that have wayyy to much material for one school year and are graded on a single final examination) are taught is through lectures and readings and quizzes, and many students memorize information just so they can spit it back out for the test and then forget it. That's not how our brains learn, really learn. All the curiosity and joy of learning that is naturally built-in gets beaten out of us. And that, in a simplified explanation, is one of the reasons why most modern-day students don't like learning. They see it as a chore. Now, this doesn't adhere to all students. There are many, myself included, who are good at working the system. But there are a lot of students who are left behind.
I'm going to stop myself before I get into the same speech that I feel like I've been spewing for the past few months.
While what I wrote about above is definitely a problem I believe exists and needs to be fixed, I don't think we need to completely throw away the current system of education. It needs to be reformed, not recreated.
I went to one college scholarship competition in particular, that shall not be named herewith, in which my interview didn't really go so great. When I started talking about design thinking and education reform, both the faculty members' smiles were replaced with frowns. And while they didn't reject my ideas or statements outright, they made it known that they didn't agree with my opinions.
Which was absolutely okay.
In fact, I'm really glad they gave their honest reaction to what I was saying, because it made me realize that the extent to which I had condensed my beliefs made them not entirely accurate. And a lot more extremist than I had previously anticipated them being.
Anyway, that reductionism happened to what I thought about design thinking, and neuroscience, and STEM in general.
I had condensed everything that I believed and that I'd learned over the past two years into a five-minute rant, which ultimately didn't represent my views.
And what simultaneously cracks me up and makes me want to hide beneath the table in embarrassment is that I started acting like I knew what I was talking about, like I was some expert on the brain who knew how we could "fix" the American education system.
That's hilarious, because I'm no expert - heck, I'm not even at the "beginner" level! I just read some books and articles on these three or four topics, and when it came time to present what I thought into a verbal "five-paragraph essay" format, I did what high school taught me to do: bullshit my way through it.
Anyway. I want to get away from that reductionist attitude, especially when it comes to design thinking and my interests in neuroscience and psychology.
I think one of the best ways to re-expand everything is to discuss more. Just talk with people, figure out the different views, educate myself more.
There's so much more for me to learn. And I can't wait! I'm so frickin excited for college because, academically, I have no idea what exactly is in store for me. And I love that feeling. I'm excited to find out that for some things I've been wrongs, and for some things I've been right, and for others still I've been neither right nor wrong because we don't have all the answers yet.
I already know that I'm going to continue being active on this blog and website throughout college. Writing everything out and maintaining this online portfolio is something I've come to love because it has helped me reflect on my experiences and the things I've learned.
So stay tuned over the coming years!
