College Admissions Essay: No Air Conditioning

There I was, in the middle of summer, dealing with homework. At 2am, no less! Who does that? Even worse, the air was humid enough to swim in, and the heat was equally unbearable. I wish I had known what no air conditioning felt like in Pittsburgh in the middle of July before applying to a STEM camp at Carnegie Mellon. I would have most definitely still gone, but I could have braced myself for the copious amounts of sweat that covered every single one of us at all hours of the day. At least we were in the basement of the dorms, where the air was a single degree cooler. Why I was still up, who knows. I was done the homework, but my two good friends (we’ll call them John and Dennis) were not so lucky. We had a 10 question organic chemistry synthesis

I remember laughing off last night with John, who found it funny now that he was rested and well past that problem. I was glad he hadn’t taken offense to it, especially since he had asked me specifically for help since I was known to have taken (and mastered) organic chemistry. The rest of the day passed with nothing notable occurring until physics class. We all joked around and had fun between classes, and it wasn’t until physics came along that the day was different than any other. It was our first physics assignment, and I had opted to do it alone. I thought physics would be just as easy as all of my other subjects had been. Even though the homework problems were a bit tricky, I finished them in half an hour. However, always the procrastinator, it had been the half hour prior to the due date, so I didn’t have a chance to compare my answers to my peers’ before turning in the assignment. Many of my friends had done a study session to try and combat the problems together, but I had opted to not go. Now, sitting in physics class, we braced ourselves to receive the markings of our first

A large group of us (20 or more) spent the next four hours examining the problems. Group studying was unfamiliar territory. I didn’t usually participate in study groups, or spend so much time on a single assignment. I never had had the need to, before now. Finally, after four arduous hours, I finished the assignment. I turned it in, and hoped to never be subject to so much red again. I was embarrassed for days after resubmitting the homework. However, after I got it back the second time (free from red, thank goodness), I joined the study group for physics with a little more gusto than I had ever committed to studying. As mortified as I was about the homework incident then, I would not be in the place I am now without it. Nothing is more humbling than realizing you can’t accomplish what you thought was a simple assignment. After the physics homework, I stopped taking myself so seriously and finally realized I can’t be good at everything. Sometimes, one must depend on other people to be better than you since the work cannot be done by oneself. And that’s ok, because each of us is good at something different. However, the caveat of my revelation applies to me as well: others will depend on you when you’re talented at something, and to exploit that desperation is anathema to group collaboration. I trusted the physics assistant, and she didn’t let me down when I was utterly lost and dejected. Now, when people ask for help, no