Abstract
My attraction to science began in high school. To be honest, I was never a science person but it all changed during my sophomore year in high school. I hated my biology class in freshman year so I was terrified of just the fact that I have to take chemistry next. Surprisingly though, my teacher introduced some basic concepts of chemistry which were actually interesting. Unlike biology, which I never liked, learning chemistry felt much easier and compelling to me.
81-15 102nd ROAD,
Ozone park, NY, 11416
bchowdh001@ccny.cuny.edu
February 04, 2019
Michael Coppola
160 Convent Avenue
New York, NY 10031
Mcoppola@ccny.cuny.edu
Dear Mr. Coppola,
My attraction to science began in high school. To be honest, I was never a science person but it all changed during my sophomore year in high school. I hated my biology class in freshman year so I was terrified of just the fact that I have to take chemistry next. Surprisingly though, my teacher introduced some basic concepts of chemistry which were actually interesting. Unlike biology, which I never liked, learning chemistry felt much easier and compelling to me.
During one of my lab sessions for chemistry, we were introduced to some strong acids and we were required to add water in those acid solutions to figure out if the acidity of the acids changes and if it did, how much it did. My lab partner that day was my best friend Vashtie who actually loved biology back in freshman year and no wonder she was good in chemistry as well. That lab was moderately easy but measuring the acidity with my best friend was probably one of the main factor that I still remember about that day.
My chemistry teacher played the most significant role for me to get over my fear ofscience. Matter of fact, she even made the periodic table look cool. She never made us memorize the periodic table, rather she used to tell us stories of how some of the elements were found. Those stories indeed helped me remember the elements including their chemical components.
During the same year in high school, our class visited the Weill Cornell Medicine on the Upper East Side in Manhattan for a seminar. There was a professor named Itai Cohen who presented one of his research at the seminar we attended. I was amazed by his research and explanations of simple stuffs that are so mesmerizing that we use in our daily life. His research had a simple concept that made fascinating results. The concept that he used was “Japanese Origami”, and he figured out a way to use origami in making different useful things such as clothing, bags, etc. This seminar made me admire science more than ever before.
Chemistry is interesting and a big part of my life because it helped me to like other sciences and even mathematics. I remember I used to relate some mathematical concepts in my statistics class that I learned from chemistry. Even though the mathematical process were relatively easier in chemistry than statistics but I understood the core concepts better while solving chemistry problems. For example, in statistics, we were mostly just given problems to solve. However, in chemistry we used to find measurements of materials and try to find percent error, etc.
I could have never harbor the courage to take any other science classes in high school if I wouldn’t have been introduced to chemistry before hand. Like I mentioned before that I was frightened of taking any sciences after taking biology because my experience with biology wasn’t nearly as good as my experience in chemistry. I remember I got really low grade for biology in my first marking period back when I was a freshman. My biology teacher even asked me if I have problems understanding English. I wasn’t sure if she meant to insult me by saying that, but after this incident I got more terrified of her including the subject she used to teach us, biology.
After taking chemistry, I understood that every other sciences are actually related to chemistry and there are some concept that are common in every sciences. For example, there are some core elements that are typical in all sciences such as, collecting and analyzing data and explaining it with strong evidence.
After taking chemistry, I wanted to challenge myself more. So, I decided to take higher level biology and get over my fear. I ended up being in the International Baccalaureate (IB) program during my junior year in high school. And the science that I chose that year was biology. My experience with biology that year was nothing like freshman year. My teacher was very helpful, professional and passionate about his lessons and cared about us a lot. He made biology amusing enough even for a student like me who almost cried after taking it once. Fun fact, our IB biology teacher graduated from City College and is currently doing his second masters at City College.
Even though my experience with science didn’t had a sweet starting but it ended up making me love science. I have grown up to like sciences and I am looking forward to learn more about science that goes beyond the boundary. I am planning to choose Biochemistry as my major and hoping to enjoy my science classes even more.
Sincerely,
Bushra Chowdhury
