| Please write an essay delineating the reasons why you believe you qualify for a Bigelow scholarship. | Even though I’ve lived in Lake Oswego for most of my life, growing up, I always felt like I didn’t belong. My name sounded nothing like my friends’ names, my skin was darker than everyone else’s, and my hair was fluffier and curlier than any of my classmates’. Consciously, I knew that my differences weren’t bad, but deep down, I internalized the shame that I’d feel when my differences got brought up. I wished to be like my peers, and I didn’t like who I was born as.
I started to question this when my family hosted a girl from Afghanistan for a few days before she headed to a college near us. A member of Afghanistan’s National Robotics Team, she escaped the Taliban to pursue higher education in the US.
When she arrived, she gifted us Afghan delicacies and spices as a thank-you, a social expectation common in the Middle East. I am of Middle Eastern heritage too, but I would’ve never aligned my actions with those norms for fear of seeming even more different than I already looked. I also noticed she had made her bold eyebrows even thicker and darker with makeup, as if she thought such traits were desirable. I had the same intensely dark eyebrows – and plucked them regularly.
After we met, something wasn’t adding up like it had before. I had equated a person’s cultural diversity to inferiority. But, the same things that made me uncool somehow had no impact on the coolness of my Afghan friend. If anything, they enriched her. So why did I think those same traits devalued me?
When the LO Interact Club connected with a girls’ school in Guatemala, where previously girls could not pursue an education and usually married at fifteen, I made sure the Guatemalan girls didn’t feel the way I did growing up: that their differences were embarrassing, weird, or shameful. In meetings, we emphasized the unique traits of both groups, not just the Guatemalans. We suggested a “Cultural Food Day” where we’d send each other recipes for meals we each enjoyed, instead of simply trying Guatemalan dishes as if American food was the default. We discussed female empowerment projects within both of our schools, too, emphasizing that some struggles are common to all.
The self-love I saw in my Afghan friend inspired self-acceptance in me. I can now stand for the idea that I struggled to see in my youth: more of one culture doesn't make it better, and less of one culture doesn’t make it worse. Our differences are not to be ashamed of; they are to be highlighted.
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| Please answer the following three questions in the box below. | I applied to Brown, Cornell, Duke, Yale, Emory, NYU, Northwestern, Stanford, UChicago, USouthern California, UC Santa Barbara, UC Los Angeles, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC San Diego, University of Washington, and University of Oregon.
I was offered a spot on the waitlist from New York University and UC Santa Barbara. I am on the NYU waitlist.
I was offered admission from University of Washington and University of Oregon.
I am committed to University of Washington!
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