VCU Honors College

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“Will this new drug work?” I ponder to myself as I hold in my palm a purple pill, possibly capable of being a revolutionary drug in combating brain cancer. Yet, this new pill did not arrive out of thin air; through years of research, development, and testing, the medical team’s efforts culminated in an approximately three-centimeter long pill. However, this entire process was not possible without an education. More specifically, this entire process was not possible without an education that would challenge the researchers to think “outside the box.” With this idea, I believe that the Virginia Commonwealth University’s Honors College would provide that challenge. Using the scene as hint, I dream to become either a pharmacist at the local hospital, Chesapeake Regional Medical Center, or a pharmaceutical researcher involved in designing cancer-curing drugs. Being a pharmacist involves interpersonal communication with patients and their families, which I enjoy because of the ability to interact with others and to add spice to my days by meeting new people, while being a pharmaceutical researcher involves trial and error in designing drugs, which I enjoy because of the opportunity to engage myself in interesting challenges. Yet, both careers involve the ability to apply my favorite subject, chemistry, as a way to solve real-world problems, specifically those, such as human health, that would have a worldwide impact. I also aspire to become a pianist at my church, Saint Matthew’s Catholic Church. However, being a pianist at the church also entails being a choir director. Therefore, I aspire to become a pianist and director of the youth choir. As youth choir director, I hope to utilize my ability to work well with children and those younger than I am in order to add more life to the church. Currently, going to mass is somewhat boring because the present choir director likes hymns but not contemporary music, which is livelier and more culturally relevant to today’s audience. Therefore, by being youth choir director and pianist, I hope to add a greater sense of vivacity and enjoyment

to going to Church, which may not be felt by many in the congregation at the moment, by using the boundless energy of the children to incite the congregation to passionately sing along and maybe to clap, as well. This would bring more meaning to the experience of the Catholic Mass and would result in people living the Word in a more faithful manner. Yet, these dreams are not possible without plans for an education, particularly an education that would challenge me to think “outside the box.” In order to reach these dreams of becoming a pharmacist/pharmaceutical researcher and a youth choir director, I would need to obtain a degree in chemistry, then pharmacy, and music. Although I plan to major in chemistry, I also plan to take courses in other areas of knowledge, such as math, history, philosophy, language (perhaps Italian), and English literature. Doing so would not only satisfy my curiosity for these subjects but would also teach me to think “outside the box,” particularly since history, for example, is more of a “gray” way of thinking compared to the “black-and-white” thinking of math and science. This “out-of-the-box” thinking would facilitate the designing of an effective drug and would facilitate being youth choir director by the ability to organize the youth and the songs and by the ability to improvise songs. However, the latter would be possible by also majoring in music. However, my desire to be an “out-of-the-box” thinker could not have been possible without a few major influences. For example, as a compulsory part of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Program, students are required to write a 4,000-word research paper, the Extended Essay, by the second year of the program. By writing an Extended Essay in chemistry (Does an inverse relationship exist between the percentage composition of potassium found in the flesh and the percentage composition found in the peel of Dole bananas as they ripen?), I had to challenge myself to think of materials I could use at home that were not readily available to me; for example,

although researchers used a sophisticated type of oven to dry the plant samples, I used an outdoor grill at home in order to do the same thing because my high school does not have the oven. Another major influence is my Theory of Knowledge (a compulsory two-year course within the IB Program, taken in the eleventh and twelfth grades) teacher. As a junior who began to take the course, I was more of a scientific, “black-and-white” thinker. However, as I immersed myself more into the class, I not only found it more interesting, but I also became more of a “gray,” “out-of-the-box” thinker. For example, when discussing ethics, we learned multiple ways of determining whether an action is ethical or not, such as religion or the utilitarian theory. Although at first I adhered to only one theory or way of thinking, I ultimately learned that I could apply more than one theory to decide whether an action is ethical or not. Hence, I became more of an “out-of-the-box” thinker by learning to think of alternative ways of seeing things, such as ethics. By further developing myself as an “out-of-the-box” thinker, I may fulfill the goals of a sound education: to teach students how to apply knowledge to solve real-world problems. This is exemplified by William Butler Yeats’ remark, “Education is not the filling a bucket but the lighting of a fire.” The purpose of education is not to continuously do what our ancestors have done by filling the bucket of antiquity. The purpose of an education is to light the fire of human progress by applying knowledge in new, “out-of-the-box” ways.

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