Vanessa, a history.

Write a narrative about your life. This should include information about your accomplishments, family, educational experience, and outside activities. Be creative rather than philosophic. Remember that you are writing for a reader who knows nothing about you or your background. (1,000 words maximum)

Let’s build a time machine. We’re going to go back twenty-three years, to a muggy Memorial Day weekend in 1987. I wasted no time being born; I was out like a shot, ready to explore the world, and I have been growing, impatiently, ever since.

My parents divorced when I was very young. I grew up living with my mother, who steadfastly supported my every step and instilled in me a love of learning and a passion for creativity. As a kid, I sang, I danced, I drew and painted. I wrote plays, short stories and comic strips. I completed my homework diligently and requested extra credit assignments with the kind of enthusiasm that one could only expect from a little girl with stringy hair and enormous coke-bottle glasses. Yes, I was a nerd. I can’t remember whether I knew it at the time, but if I did, I showed no signs of caring. While my best friend decided to ration her time between playing with me and wooing the popular kids, I spent my recess hours creating the perfect scrapbook page on which to display my winning ribbon from the 5th grade science fair.

I have always been a good student, but eventually my love of school gave way to a love of theatre. For eight years, I spent my summers rehearsing for musical theatre productions. Once I reached high school, I spent the academic year in much the same fashion. I played ensemble parts, supporting characters and leading roles. I embodied the dark, moody spirit of the true Grimm fairytales as Little Red in Into the Woods. I portrayed an impassioned young woman with fiercely loyal gang aspirations as Anybodys in West Side Story and a poor Jewish bride fighting archaic traditions and the rising tide of prejudice as Tzeitel in Fiddler on the Roof. I understudied the gregarious Reno Sweeny in Anything Goes and, in an unexpected turn of events, deftly took to the stage on the night of our very last rehearsal. I managed to perfect the precarious act of balancing my theatrical endeavors with my studies and graduated fifth in my class with a degree from the prestigious International Baccalaureate program in hand.

A few short months later, I was off to the big city. After years of excelling in my English classes and harboring a deep-set love of writing, I had decided that a career in broadcast journalism would be perfect for me. I excitedly began my studies at Emerson College, and was promptly dismayed to discover that I had seriously underestimated my love of the sciences. No more amino acids or cellular pathways or vascular systems? No more valence electrons or resonance structures or hydrogen bonds? No more magnetic fields or gravitational interactions or protons? I could have cried.

Instead, I transferred to Wheaton College and took up a major in Physics and Astronomy and a minor in Biology. I thought that would fix matters. And it did, for a time. I found my creative niche in The Blend, Wheaton’s only co-ed a capella group. I joined the Physics Club and played an active part in fundraising and event planning. I delved deeper into the physical sciences than I ever thought possible. I spent a semester studying biology in Australia and returned older, wiser and more sunburnt. During my senior year, I made the trek to Rhode Island twice a week to attend an EMT certification class in an effort to get a better sense of how science is practically applied. I graduated Magna Cum Laude, with a job offer from an ambulance company in my hometown. I was ecstatic. I had everything figured out.

Of course, life is never quite that easy. There was something amiss in my plan and, deep down, I knew it. While working as an EMT, I spent my downtime reading articles about health and astrophysics in newspapers, blogs, magazines, and anything else I could get my hands on. I missed the classroom desperately, but after spending a college summer in academia, I knew that research wasn’t for me. There was simply too much interesting science to learn about. On a whim, I decided to move halfway across the country to Colorado to gain some perspective.

A few weeks after my big move, I had an epiphany. I had just returned from a long hike. I hadn’t quite adjusted to the high altitude, and the blazing summer sun and ever-present haze of black flies had made my climb all the more challenging. Exhausted, I sat down at my computer and began surfing my usual haunts. As I scrolled along, silently cursing the scientific illiteracy of so many journalists, it suddenly occurred to me that I could do a much better job. I could easily explain the mechanics of a black hole or the physiology of the human heart to the general public. In fact, I had been doing it for years. At Emerson, I had detailed the physics of time travel to a classroom full of actors and poets. At Wheaton, I had elaborated on the emergency treatment of eviscerated tissues to a table full of music students and social scientists. I get laypeople excited about science; that’s my thing.

These days I run Cosmodynamics, a science blog that has received hits from every corner of the globe. By day, I pay the bills. By night, I read and learn, edit and educate. It’s a great life. Even now, lightyears away from the geeky little girl I once was, I still wouldn’t have it any other way. In the end, some things just don’t change.

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TL;DR version: Dear Boston University, Please accept me. Love, Vanessa