Notes

Through my past and future experience I think I will be a valuable asset ​to add to Macalester's community, both personally and academically. First, my background will help me adapt and seek connections with others from different socioeconomic, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. I have already had this experience once. When I was a kid, I grew up in an area with almost no African Americans. There was not a single African American in my entire middle school. But I was going to attend Loyola Academy, a private Jesuit high school with people from all over Chicago that had different backgrounds and race, and I had not been friends or had a deep conversation with someone from the African American race before. This scared me even though it shouldn't have. But from my first conversation with Salim, who is African American, on the first day of freshman year, I realized that I should be more open to new experiences. Salim has been my best friend ever since. In high school, I have learned to build friendships and connections with people from different socioeconomic and racial backgrounds. Having different points of views and different backgrounds did not hurt my friendship with Salim, but instead helped our friendship grow. We had to try harder to see things through the other's eyes and that has made us closer. To this day, we still don't see some things eye to eye, but our friendship is based around the fact that we are both committed to working hard to resolve our differences. This experience taught me to go into every situation with an open approach, knowing that I will come out at the end a changed and better person and this is what I expect to do at Malcalester. Second, at Malcalester, I hope to achieve my dream of learning and mastering new programming languages. My passion for computer science was instilled on me when I was young and it has been ongoing ever since. Whenever I think I have finished a computer program, I would always end up adding more to it. And when I am working on a program, I keep learning more through trial and error. Because of my passion, I have learned programming languages such as, PHP and Javascript, but there is still a plethora of language to learn, test out, and master. At Malcalester, I believe that this drive will help me academically to continue improving. People always say excitement is contagious and I believe that through my excitement I will be able to instill that excitement of knowledge into others that are part of the Malcalester's community.