“Will this new drug work?” I ponder to myself as I hold in my palm a purple pill,

possibly capable of being a revolutionary drug in combating brain cancer. Yet, this new pill did

not arrive out of thin air; through years of research, development, and testing, the medical team’s

efforts culminated in an approximately three-centimeter long pill. However, this entire process

was not possible without an education. More specifically, this entire process was not possible

without an education that would challenge the researchers to think “outside the box.” With this

idea, I believe that the Virginia Commonwealth University’s Honors College would provide that

challenge.

Using the scene as hint, I dream to become either a pharmacist at the local hospital,

Chesapeake Regional Medical Center, or a pharmaceutical researcher involved in designing

cancer-curing drugs. Being a pharmacist involves interpersonal communication with patients and

their families, which I enjoy because of the ability to interact with others and to add spice to my

days by meeting new people, while being a pharmaceutical researcher involves trial and error in

designing drugs, which I enjoy because of the opportunity to engage myself in interesting

challenges. Yet, both careers involve the ability to apply my favorite subject, chemistry, as a way

to solve real-world problems, specifically those, such as human health, that would have a

worldwide impact.

I also aspire to become a pianist at my church, Saint Matthew’s Catholic Church.

However, being a pianist at the church also entails being a choir director. Therefore, I aspire to

become a pianist and director of the youth choir. As youth choir director, I hope to utilize my

ability to work well with children and those younger than I am in order to add more life to the

church. Currently, going to mass is somewhat boring because the present choir director likes

hymns but not contemporary music, which is livelier and more culturally relevant to today’s

audience. Therefore, by being youth choir director and pianist, I hope to add a greater sense of

vivacity and enjoyment to going to Church, which may not be felt by many in the congregation

at the moment, by using the boundless energy of the children to incite the congregation to

passionately sing along and maybe to clap, as well. This would bring more meaning to the

experience of the Catholic Mass and would result in people living the Word in a more faithful

manner.

Yet, these dreams are not possible without plans for an education, particularly an

education that would challenge me to think “outside the box.” In order to reach these dreams of

becoming a pharmacist/pharmaceutical researcher and a youth choir director, I would need to

obtain a degree in chemistry, then pharmacy, and music. Although I plan to major in chemistry, I

also plan to take courses in other areas of knowledge, such as math, history, philosophy,

language (perhaps Italian), and English literature. Doing so would not only satisfy my curiosity

for these subjects but would also teach me to think “outside the box,” particularly since history,

for example, is more of a “gray” way of thinking compared to the “black-and-white” thinking of

math and science. This “out-of-the-box” thinking would facilitate the designing of an effective

drug and would facilitate being youth choir director by the ability to organize the youth and the

songs and by the ability to improvise songs. However, the latter would be possible by also

majoring in music.

However, my desire to be an “out-of-the-box” thinker could not have been possible

without a few major influences. For example, as a compulsory part of the International

Baccalaureate (IB) Program, students are required to write a 4,000-word research paper, the

Extended Essay, by the second year of the program. By writing an Extended Essay in chemistry

(Does an inverse relationship exist between the percentage composition of potassium found in

the flesh and the percentage composition found in the peel of Dole bananas as they ripen?), I had

to challenge myself to think of materials I could use at home that were not readily available to

me; for example, although researchers used a sophisticated type of oven to dry the plant samples,

I used an outdoor grill at home in order to do the same thing because my high school does not

have the oven.

Another major influence is my Theory of Knowledge (a compulsory two-year course

within the IB Program, taken in the eleventh and twelfth grades) teacher. As a junior who began

to take the course, I was more of a scientific, “black-and-white” thinker. However, as I immersed

myself more into the class, I not only found it more interesting, but I also became more of a

“gray,” “out-of-the-box” thinker. For example, when discussing ethics, we learned multiple ways

of determining whether an action is ethical or not, such as religion or the utilitarian theory.

Although at first I adhered to only one theory or way of thinking, I ultimately learned that I could

apply more than one theory to decide whether an action is ethical or not. Hence, I became more

of an “out-of-the-box” thinker by learning to think of alternative ways of seeing things, such as

ethics.

By further developing myself as an “out-of-the-box” thinker, I may fulfill the goals of a

sound education: to teach students how to apply knowledge to solve real-world problems. This is

exemplified by William Butler Yeats’ remark, “Education is not the filling a bucket but the

lighting of a fire.” The purpose of education is not to continuously do what our ancestors have

done by filling the bucket of antiquity. The purpose of an education is to light the fire of human

progress by applying knowledge in new, “out-of-the-box” ways.