Question number 8 on my Truman Application

Again, I need help on my Truman application. In any case, you're going to be learning a lot about me...

For reference, you can find satisfactory and unsatisfactory responses to this question here .

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8. Describe a recent particularly satisfying public service activity.

This fall, I volunteered for the Avid Readership Program at the Crosstown Learning Center, a church daycare for low income families. The readership program asks volunteers to spend one hour a week reading stories and playing with the kids while their parents are working. On my first occasion to volunteer, one story I remembered reading was "A Rainy Day to Remember”. Predictably, the story revolved around a rainy day that would turn out to be a memorable one for the young child in the story. I smiled as I read the story, for the political correctness of the story amused me. I was amused by the fact that the main character, a young black child, befriended a young white child. As I read the story, I looked around the room. Kids of black, white, and Hispanic influence happily played with each other. And there was me, an Asian college student reading children’s stories to them. In that moment, I wished that we could get all the world's leaders in a room and read them children's stories. That moment brought me insight to my desire to bring understanding among the nations.

It never hurts to ask

There's one major problem with dual majoring in electrical engineering and history: You don't have a lot of free blocks.

Fortunately, I came in as a sophomore (you're considered a sophomore if you come in with over 30 hours...I had the max 36 hours from AP classes). Despite that fact, I still wouldn't have graduated early due to the fall-spring-fall-spring sequence of classes in the electrical engineering program (our engineering class is so small that prerequisites for some courses must be taken in order...it's the same reason why I couldn't go study abroad). I did join the honors program, i.e. an extra curriculum of English and philosophy courses, since I didn't have anything better to do.

Then, I tacked on another major.

Engineering requires 124 credits. History requires 33 credits. So all I needed was 157 credits to graduate with both, and with my AP credit all I needed was 121 credits. That's an average of 30 hours a year, which wouldn't be too bad.

Except I didn't count the core curriculum. The core curriculum is a bit different between the engineering college and the liberal arts college. Notably, engineering doesn't require a second language while the liberal arts college requires four semesters of another language. I had taken Spanish in high school, but my AP teacher was terrible so I didn't bother taking the test.

I counted up the credits earlier this semester, and I wouldn't be able to graduate in four years with both if I had to do the language thing. So I began to think of ways that I could waive the language requirement. It took me awhile, but I figured that the liberal arts college wanted a second language to broaden our horizons and experience another culture. Heck, my parents are Vietnamese and they speak Vietnamese to me all the time at home.

How could I prove that this would suffice?

I had to go around the liberal arts school, sending an email to the dean and my genius advisor. And finally I found the right person.

Today, I met with her to discuss the whole language thing. It turns out that I'm like her children...they hear their native language all the time but they don't often practice it (I think she was of Indian descent). The universe conspired to help me, for she said she would waive the language requirement and notify my genius advisor of that fact.

I just might be able to graduate with both degrees in four years after all.

It never hurts to ask.