Diversity of Interests by Samantha

Diversity of Interests by Samantha - June 2017 Scholarship Essay

When I was a little girl, I aspired to become a writer. In first grade, I made my own school newspaper for my elementary school and I interviewed my friends to “find out the next big scoop”. I printed out a few copies and I would give my newspaper to my classmates. Whenever I needed to organize my thoughts I went straight to writing down all of my emotions. I also spent some of my time writing down fictional, short stories. My brain would always go from one original story to the next. I knew at a young age that I wanted to be a storyteller, but I was uncertain about what my future profession would be.

As I got older, I became more intrigued by other school subjects. Specifically, science was (and still is) amazing to me since it could answer almost all of my questions about the world. I was extremely curious about everything, so I would spend most of my lunch breaks with my science teacher asking her all different types of questions. One day I would ask something about the human body and the next day I would ask questions about the ozone layer. I wanted to know as much as I could about everything. My passion for science grew stronger all throughout elementary and middle school.

In high school, I figured out that I was also extremely fascinated by art. I started my transition to high school by taking a ceramics class over the summer. My priority was originally to just become familiar with the campus. Soon I realized that my goal was to make as many cool pottery items as possible. Waking up every morning was a joy because I was so excited to get back into sculpting. From there, I was curious to see what other art classes I could take in high school. I took a drama class and I fell in love with performing and stage management. Then I decided to take video production along with a 2D design course. By the time I reached my senior year I realized that out of all of the art classes I had taken, I really enjoyed film photography the best. I loved being in the dark room and developing black and white photographs. Photography was a way to get me out of my comfort zone because I was always outside exploring places to find the best scenery for a photoshoot.

By the time I reached graduation from high school, I did not have a clue as to what I wanted to pursue. I knew I enjoyed math and science along with art, but I was not sure how I could meld the two together. So I decided that my best route would be to go to a community college and use the time there to decide what I wanted to do with my life. At my community college I took mainly stem courses with a few general education requirements. I found out that I was also fond of computer science and psychology. Luckily for me, I was able to find the perfect major that would allow me to explore my multiple interests.

I have been accepted into UCLA and I am going to be a cognitive science major. Cognitive science is a new, interdisciplinary major that holds most of my interest. It is a major that explores math, computer science, psychology, and neuroscience. I want to study artificial intelligence when I get there and I hope that one day I will be able to code for video games. My goal is to one day start up my own indie game development company. The games I want to create would involve implementing more artificial intelligence into the main characters. I have always been interested in character design and it has been a hobby of mine to create new characters along with stories to go with them. When I was first introduced to the concept of artificial intelligence, I thought it would be a fantastic idea to focus more on how to make video game characters feel more realistic. Instead of having the character go through a dialogue that was already predetermined by the developer, it would be more interesting to have a character that reacts to the player’s actions immediately as if they were human too. The game characters could learn more about the player’s style and each character could form a unique relationship with the user. Since story rich video games are becoming increasingly popular over the years, I believe implementing more artificial intelligence into games could make the stories more impactful. Making these types of games would allow me to use my analytical side with my creative side. Also making these types of games would allow me to be the storyteller that I have always wanted to be. This scholarship would make me feel more determined then ever to reach my dream career one day.