Mary Oliver’s question, the end of a beautiful poem, haunts me, “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Variations of that inquiry are daily presented to me: “what college are you going to?” or “what do you want to major in?” or the ever popular “what do you want to be when you grow up?” I always freeze at the first two and play the last one off as a joke by responding, “an adult, hopefully.” Deciding what I want to do with my life feels like a battle of forces, an everyday struggle between science and political science and since I love both, I had no idea how to choose just one to focus on in college.
My love for science came first. Even as a middle schooler, I spent countless hours pouring over books, learning about the harms of artificial sweeteners, the benefits of myriad diet plans, different fats and how they affect the human body, and reading almost all the books about
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During my sophomore year, Advanced Placement United States History class quickly became my favorite course. I was one of the youngest in my class, surrounded by mostly upperclassmen who seemed to know exactly what they were doing. Intimidated by this class, I poured myself into my studies and fell in love with history, especially the creation of the United States. The debates between Federalists and Jeffersonians about the future of America, the enactment of Enlightenment ideals in this new experiment of a country, the creation of the Articles of Confederation, and then the Constitution, and later all the Amendments fascinated me. The complexity of all these issues and the fundamental question underlying these issues, how to create the best government, piqued my interest in a way completely different than the formulas and equations of my Chemistry classes. These issues had tangible applications in the real world and had the capacity to do great good and great