Okay world, are you ready? I am a superhero.
No, I don’t mean I’m the best or brightest. I’m talking about my dynamic duality. You see, just like every good superhero, I have an alter ego. By day, I’m a science lover, gathering data and guarding chemistry and biology. But as darkness descends each night, I don my cape and set out to protect another that I hold dear — my passion for history.
The Call: All superheroes start from humble beginnings.
Bruce Wayne’s journey started as an eight-year old boy who was petrified by bats. My own terror used to be Chinese history. I was stuck in the “dinosaur phase” — a period of fascination that captivates the minds of children — and I had little interest in abandoning the measurements of a Brontosaurus for the political turmoil of the Qin Dynasty.
The Transformation: Superheroes acquire their superpowers.
Before stepping foot into Mr. Marks’ sixth grade class, I had never paid much attention to history. But there was something about Mr. Marks’ presence, his ability to hold our attention with tales about Roman conquests and Greek mythology. He was the Ra’s-al-Ghul to my Bruce Wayne, opening up an entirely new world for me and changing my views forever.
The Challenge: Superheroes are constantly tested by their adversaries.
While Bruce Wayne thwarted psychotic criminals bent on world domination, I battled a different sort of injustice, fighting villains like Stereotype and Preconception. One time, I mentioned to a family friend that I enjoyed history. She looked at me, concerned, and half-jokingly felt my forehead to see if I was suffering from some sort of exotic disease. Perhaps she was georteyphobic — terrified of history.
The Abyss: The superhero meets a character-defining obstacle in his quest.
My own abyss is more commonly known as Silicon Valley — an area of the world where history is at best an endangered species. Both my parents are engineers, and seemingly all my relatives and family friends are involved in one scientific field or another. So, like every other superhero, I had a secret insecurity about what I fought for. I didn’t think it was normal to love two seemingly contradictory subjects like history and science. In my world, people had to choose, and the division was clear: STEM and life-long success on one sunny side… and humanities on the overcast other half.
The Revelation: With this crisis, the superhero makes a realization about his own efforts and character.
After learning about the Scientific Revolution in AP Euro and exploring the history of the atom in chemistry class, I realized something that I had been overlooking for years: history and science are interwoven disciplines. Understanding one is not possible without knowing the other. And armed with this invincible newfound power, I stepped forward…
The Return: Challenge overcome, the superhero triumphantly prepares to face what comes next.
“History is boring…” “History is useless…” “History is only for conceited intellectuals, and the more you know about it the likelier you are to go broke and die starving in a gutter, the thin parchment of your all-too-useless Ph.D. wrapped around you like a blanket to ward off the cold.”
My duty is clear: to fight against these perceptions and reveal them for the falsehoods that they are. To remind people that history and science don’t just coexist but thrive together. Now that I’ve overcome my own internal battle, I am ready to save the world from its fears. If anyone scoffs at Napoleon’s diminutive stature, I’ll swoop in to tell him that Napoleon was five-foot-two in Imperial French inches, but actually a respectable five-foot-seven by today’s standards. When someone confuses centripetal force with the fictitious centrifugal force, I’ll come crashing in to correct them. I’m a silent guardian, a watchful protector … a much less intimidating Dark Knight.
History will remember me. Oh, and of course, science will too.
Written in October 2013 for college applications.