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Submission information
Submission Number: 28
Submission ID: 283
Submission UUID: 76b8264e-02e5-4ac5-8aac-b22862024e37
Created: Tue, 04/06/2021 - 18:43
Completed: Tue, 04/06/2021 - 18:43
Changed: Tue, 05/06/2025 - 02:19
Remote IP address: 72.194.59.162
Submitted by:Anonymous
Language: English
Is draft: No
Flagged: Yes
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Kasey
Connors
She/Her
Santa Barbara
CA
United States
93109
Aerospace
English (5), Spanish (1)
I zipped up my snow jacket and looked around at the rest of the ski school group. Some of them were talking in what I believed was German and I tried my best to decipher it. After explaining our day's plans in German, the instructor turned to me and the two other British kids who were in the group and translated for us. I tried to take her translation and work it back to learn more German but as my brain was processing this we started skiing down the mountain. My full attention had to quickly shift to not falling and traversing the slope and ever trying to catch up with our speedy Austrian instructor.
It had only been a month into our six-month stay in Germany when my family and I wound up in the small town of Oberstdorf at the southern border of Germany, surrounded by the Alps and ski mountains. After spending the end of winter there, we traveled mostly by train and bus to explore the region. As the weather turned warmer, we rode rented bikes through the Black Forest, we were even able to hop on a train here and there where our route became too steep! Taking our bikes laden with our gear through the luscious green forest was truly incredible and so different from living in California where it is a much drier and arid climate with chaparral.
I was too young back then (I was 9) to realize how incredible it was to be fluent in a second language, though it always impressed me that the other kids I met there often knew two or three languages at such a young age. Once on a boat tour through the canals of Ghent, I recall that the guide was able to translate the tour and the subtleties of his jokes into five different languages!
Since that trip, I have been taught Spanish in school for many years, but it can't compete with being lost in a train station and either having to decipher signs or try to put together a sentence to ask someone where your train is.
It had only been a month into our six-month stay in Germany when my family and I wound up in the small town of Oberstdorf at the southern border of Germany, surrounded by the Alps and ski mountains. After spending the end of winter there, we traveled mostly by train and bus to explore the region. As the weather turned warmer, we rode rented bikes through the Black Forest, we were even able to hop on a train here and there where our route became too steep! Taking our bikes laden with our gear through the luscious green forest was truly incredible and so different from living in California where it is a much drier and arid climate with chaparral.
I was too young back then (I was 9) to realize how incredible it was to be fluent in a second language, though it always impressed me that the other kids I met there often knew two or three languages at such a young age. Once on a boat tour through the canals of Ghent, I recall that the guide was able to translate the tour and the subtleties of his jokes into five different languages!
Since that trip, I have been taught Spanish in school for many years, but it can't compete with being lost in a train station and either having to decipher signs or try to put together a sentence to ask someone where your train is.
The hall looks long, but each door is a portal to new faces, new ideas, and new possibilities! Wouldn’t it be amazing if the person on the other side of the door would come from a background completely different from mine, so we can share our stories? Help to see things from a new perspective and through a different lens? It would be so fun to find people to explore the campus, Boulder, and outlying areas to seek out adventures and new experiences. What if they would be in my same major and we could study, collaborate and study for tests together? That would be so great! And I’m really excited about the idea of becoming fluent in another language, and maybe the person down the hall will speak that language so we can practice. Wouldn’t it be great, all those new friends behind each door…..
I would like someone that would invite me to go places with them. To go skiing or hiking to a really cool spot I had never seen before. I would like to have a person to study and collaborate on projects but also someone that I could just go to hang out with. I would really enjoy learning another language and having friends that I could speak with to improve my knowledge. I would also like to know people that have a different lens of the world than I do and had different experiences that I could learn from. People who think differently to have always been helpful on projects or problem solving to me.
I would like someone that would invite me to go places with them. To go skiing or hiking to a really cool spot I had never seen before. I would like to have a person to study and collaborate on projects but also someone that I could just go to hang out with. I would really enjoy learning another language and having friends that I could speak with to improve my knowledge. I would also like to know people that have a different lens of the world than I do and had different experiences that I could learn from. People who think differently to have always been helpful on projects or problem solving to me.
When I applied to Boulder, I was focused on the university and my major. Filling out applications and scholarship applications is giving me even more perspective on the possibilities of my future career. It has also given me time to think about the impact of taking it to a global level and considering extending ideas and efforts on a global scale. I was raised in a privileged environment, and I feel like I need more experience in a variety of environments to be able to better understand the complicated issues in other countries and be able to extend my efforts with a global emphasis. I’ve also talked about my regrets in not becoming fluent in German or Spanish, but I have a good foundation - I’m really excited about pushing myself to gain fluency in one or both of those languages. I am looking forward to learning more about this exciting program and making a difference!
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