To understand our universe, we must first understand its history. The start will show us the end. History repeats itself. It’s a phrase we grow up hearing in every history class, every ethics lesson. Mistakes happen again and again and again. Yet we also learn that no two snowflakes are alike, that neither zebras nor leopards share the same pattern, and that our fingerprints are infinitely different. The universe itself is unique, and every pattern within it is equally unique. Human beings have spent millennia searching the universe, looking to the stars for answers, praying to unseen beings, creating stories to explain the inexplicable. The universe is constantly expanding; stars appearing and disappearing before our eyes. In more recent times, we’ve used telescopes and space stations to discover new planets. The very nature of humanity’s presence in the universe is an enigma. We spend billions of dollars a year exploring what is yet to be found, but in all our scientific exploration, we have yet to find the elusive cure for history itself. My AP and IB history classes, while of course emphasizing the importance of learning our own short, linear history in order to avoid any repetitive failures, have also given me resources and opportunities to explore history for myself, and let me develop my own understanding of the past. This has been instrumental in my comprehension of the causes of historical events. To understand why history happens, we must first learn the causes, what led us to that point, and then, by relating those causes to similar events and feelings we see around us in the modern day, we can hope to avoid repeated mistakes and tragedies. For the last few years, I’ve been asked what I want to be when I grow up, where I want to go to college, and what I’m going to make of myself. In 6 months, I will be studying History at The College of William & Mary in Colonial Williamsburg - a notion only made more exciting by the fact that my dream school was the first college in the United States. I’ll be literally surrounded by, and figuratively steeped in, history. I will pursue a deeper understanding of our world, our universe - how it was built and how it came to be. And, using a historical lens, perhaps what it will be. Once I’m grown and flown, and starting to establish my place in the world, I want to be a history teacher, sharing what my own teachers and research have taught me, and building onto what my future students will learn with every class they take: a case of history repeating itself on a personal level. The nature of our universe is to be unique, but human beings love patterns. We see them everywhere: angel numbers, math, behavior. But more broadly, if we know why history happens, we can stop it from happening again. The cycle is breakable, and our relentless pursuit of knowledge will lead to good things. To me, creating new solutions to old problems can be aided, not only by an expansive education, but by increasing access to new historical perspectives and resources. The universe has so much life - exploding stars, supernovas, icy planets. We've looked for life outside of Earth, wishing on shooting stars for little green men in flying saucers to come down and save us all. But we might be truly alone in the universe. And if we are, our history is all we have to save ourselves. History repeats itself...until we learn how to stop it.

Ever since I was little, I’ve been obsessed with beautiful old things that carry a story with them. As a voracious reader, I’ve developed a love for history around the world, including Scottish history and ancient civilizations. I spent this past summer in Scotland, living by myself with my grandmother in St. Andrews, becoming part of the tight-knit community of this age-old town of cobbled streets. St. Andrews is where I changed. Everything connected. I spent the summer living, working, and volunteering there: I served tourists who flocked to the seaside on holiday; I greeted theater patrons and watched their faces invest in the unfolding play at the historic Byre Theatre; I stood shoulder-to-shoulder in a crowd of proud parents watching their graduate troop into St. Salvator’s Chapel. And I wanted to be one of them. I want to wear those robes. I want to hear those bells ring for me. I want to be part of the living history of a storied university and immerse myself in the past, the present, and the future of my own personal history. So, I’ve applied to the Joint Degree Program, an elite educational collaboration between the University of St. Andrews and The College of William & Mary in Colonial Williamsburg, VA. Established in 1413 and 1693 respectively, each institution is located slap-bang in the center of a small historic town where everything is gloriously old! It's almost embarrassing how excited I am to have classes at my dream schools, with their extensive course catalogs and impressive faculty. My Scottish grandparents were teachers, my favorite people have been teachers, and my beloved Ms. Horsman in 1st Grade even predicted I would be a teacher. Watching Granny capture and keep the attention of my little brother as she helps him make homemade raspberry jam is a masterclass in teaching – she has this squirrelly child fully engaged and focused. Once a teacher, always a teacher, as she says. She has taught generations of students – deploying a gentle yet indisputable air of authority to mesmerize rowdy kids – always making each child feel seen and valued and important. It’s an indispensable skill I hope I can emulate. All my life, teachers have given me everything I need to succeed, and I want to further that legacy by becoming “Ms. LaHiff” in my own classroom for the next generation of bright, shiny students.

Being the progeny of two uniquely individual, yet intertwined high-achievers, I am one myself, meeting and exceeding the expectations set for me by my parents - and also by myself. Throughout my years in school, I’ve honed a strong work ethic and taken the most advanced courses available to me, simply trying to learn more. My parents always joke that I prefer dusty pages to sand between my toes, so the summer of a lifetime that we spent on the tropical island of St. Croix was the summer I chose to spend taking U.S. History online. That was no real surprise - rather a typical indicator of my need always to know more about anything and everything, even if it disrupted beach vacations or came with no extra credit. History is telling stories, past, present, and future, which aligns perfectly with my other obsession: literature. As a voracious reader, the curious child of two world travelers, and a dual citizen of the U.S. and the U.K. myself, I’ve developed a passion for history around the world, including Scottish history and an ongoing obsession with the histories and cultures of Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, and Ancient Rome. My parents are smart in almost diametrically opposed ways: with an almost-eidetic memory, my gifted Scottish mother exists within the flights of fancy of language and literature, while my American father’s linear mind excels in science and math, his fastidious diligence bringing every project to completion. Happily, they bestowed upon me the best of both their learning styles. Every fact I read makes its way into the endless bear trap of my memory, and every assignment is conscientiously completed. This natural ability to absorb information, combined with inherited dogged diligence, has me well-prepared for rigorous courses at college. Ever since I was little, I’ve always been obsessed with ancient stories and beautiful old things that carry a story with them. The College of William & Mary was established in 1693 and is located slap-bang in the center of renowned Colonial Williamsburg where everything is gloriously old! It's almost embarrassing how excited I am to have classes at my dream school, with its extensive course catalog and impressive faculty. I've attended public school for 13 years, I plan on studying at a public college, and ultimately teaching in a public institution. My Scottish grandparents were teachers, my favorite people have been teachers, and my beloved Ms. Horsman in 1st Grade even predicted I would be a teacher. My teachers gave me everything to succeed and I want to continue and further that legacy. Everybody has dreams. Or at least, everybody should have dreams because right in that space of optimism and opportunity lies the very best of ourselves. The College of William & Mary is an out-of-state dream for me, so it's an expensive dream with a big price-tag. This generous scholarship would help me offset the cost of closing in on being called "Ms. LaHiff" by the next generation of bright, shiny students.

To understand our universe, we must first understand its history. The start will show us the end. History repeats itself. It’s a phrase we grow up hearing in every history class, every ethics lesson. Mistakes happen again and again and again. Yet we also learn that no two snowflakes are alike, that neither zebras nor leopards share the same pattern, and that fingerprints are infinitely different. The universe itself is unique, and every pattern within it is equally unique. Human beings have spent millennia searching the universe, looking to the stars for answers, praying to unseen beings, creating stories to explain the inexplicable. The universe is constantly expanding; stars appearing and disappearing before our eyes. In more recent times, we’ve used telescopes and space stations to discover new planets. The very nature of humanity’s presence in the universe is an enigma. We spend billions of dollars a year exploring what is yet to be found, but in all our scientific exploration, we have yet to find the elusive cure for history itself. My AP and IB history classes, while of course emphasizing the importance of learning our own short, linear history in order to avoid any repetitive failures, have also given me resources and opportunities to explore history for myself, and let me develop my own understanding of the past. This has been instrumental in my comprehension of the causes of historical events. To understand why history happens, we must first learn the causes, what led us to that point, and then, by relating those causes to similar events and feelings we see around us in the modern day, we can hope to avoid repeated mistakes and tragedies. For the last few years, I’ve been asked what I want to be when I grow up, where I want to go to college, and what I’m going to make of myself. When I’m grown and flown and establishing my place in the world, I want to be a history teacher, sharing what my own teachers and research taught me, and building onto what my future students will learn with every history class they take: a case of history repeating itself on a personal level. But more broadly, if we know why history happens, we can stop it from happening again. The cycle is breakable, and our relentless pursuit of knowledge will lead to good things. To me, creating new solutions to old problems can be aided, not only by an expansive education, but by increasing access to new historical perspectives and resources. The nature of our universe is to be unique, but human beings love patterns. We see them everywhere: angel numbers, math, behavior. In 8 months, I will be at my dream college, The College of William & Mary in Colonial Williamsburg, studying history - a notion only made more exciting by the fact that my dream school was the first college in the United States. I’ll be figuratively steeped in, and literally surrounded by, history. I will pursue a deeper understanding of our world, our universe - how it was built and how it came to be. And, using a historical lens, perhaps what it will be. The universe has so much life - exploding stars, supernovas, icy planets. We've looked for life outside of Earth, wishing on shooting stars for little green men in flying saucers to come down and save us all. But we might be truly alone in the universe. And if we are, our history is all we have to save ourselves. History repeats itself - until we know how to stop it.

I do the NYT Connections puzzle every day & I love getting my quick daily brain-flex! My NYT Connections puzzle is all about things that are important to most college students! I had a great time putting together this student-themed Connections puzzle that offers 4 categories that college kids always have top of mind: Money, Pizza, Coins & Studying Group 1: Slang for Money CABBAGE, PAPER, BRASS, CLAMS Since students are always needing money, I figured we could add some confusion to the puzzle since many slang words for money are also food names, which would tie in with the Pizza category. BRASS could twist puzzlers in frustrated knots as they Group 2: Words to do with Pizza DOUGH, SAUCE, CHEESE, SLICE College kids are always hungry and in need of pizza - some of these words will need to get de-tangled by puzzle-solvers from the Money category. SLICE could have some puzzlers trying to group it together with GRIND or POUND or CRANK. Group 3: Names of Coins GROAT, POUND, CROWN, FLORIN Never be too proud to check the couch for lost coins!! Here are some fun words for coins to keep puzzlers sorting through those categories. Group 4: Synonyms for Studying GRIND, CRAM, SWOT, CRANK Let's keep the student theme going with a category on Studying... I wonder how many synonyms puzzlers might know for 'hitting the books' or 'pulling an all-nighter'? They might try to mis-match CRAM & GRIND with words in other categories like POUND & PAPER. Some people might try to match CROWN, CRANK, CRAM but they'd fail to find a 4th CR-word to make a Connection category, hahaha! So, the game is afoot... good luck to the puzzlers & I hope I win this scholarship! Thank you, NYT Connections!

She always called me "Lamb Chop", or "Pumpkin" or " Sweetie Pie" or "Honey Bun". She was warmth and love and good times. Nana's kitchen was always buzzing with activity, counters covered with platters of appetizers, the oven packed with trays of home-made comfort foods, a constant flow of nephews, aunts, cousins and siblings all squeezing past each other in the hot, tight space, as the dishwasher groaned and swished through yet another load. There was nothing more important to Nana than family and her grandchildren were her everything. And I felt the fullness of that adoration every time we flew up to New Jersey to see her. (And also Grandpa) Nana was an All-American Classic - she was pot roast, Hershey bars, family trips to Disney, milk & Oreos, church on Sunday, parties with the neighbors, a neatly-shoveled sidewalk, a dedicated company employee, a fresh-baked pie, family photographs on every wall, a basement filled with toys & games, endless pairs of black shoes with a sensible heel, boisterous get-togethers filled with favorite stories and lots of belly-laughs. It was almost exactly the expected 18 months from her ALS diagnosis until she slipped away on January 10th, 2017. Of course, she kept the awful news secret for several months, until the coughing became a debilitating inability to swallow and she had to tell her kids what was going on. Then she moved right into cracking jokes about how she was finally gonna lose the weight she'd always complained about and proposing the exact details she wanted at her funeral. It was hard to witness the changes. We would go up every couple of months - sometimes driving 14 hours through the night because our dog was too old to be left in boarding. She was visibly thinner and frailer each time, the ever-present bottle of water for the coughing now long-replaced with a harness to keep her airway more open. First a walker, then a wheelchair, then tubes and the hospital-type bed and kindly caregivers. One time, as my mom was helping her change, I overheard Nana (always proper, always polite Nana) who never, ever said bad words, say to her in a raspy spit of frustrated anger, "Pardon my French, but this fucking sucks!" The cruelty of ALS afflicting one of Life's nicer humans is something I'll never forget. I miss my Nana, probably in just the same way that Mr. Terbrack is missed by his wife & family. She left a gaping hole in the family when she died. Nobody can fill it. Nobody would really dare even try. But what I know to be true is that she affected us all deeply. Nana is the reminder that people will never forget how you made them feel. She always showed up for people - most especially when there was something to celebrate, but also if they were in trouble or needed some type of support. Nana made me feel cherished. She soaked in my every utterance, was so deeply proud of my every accomplishment, my every grade, my every terrible artwork. I saw how she made other people feel this same way. I saw how she made everyone feel like the best versions of themselves and how they strove to keep inflating this goodness in themselves lest they should ever disappoint her. I hope I can make others feel cherished like Nana did.. When we feel valued, seen, loved, we don't want to hurt other people. A lesson for a big angry world. I think I understood, Nana... love always, Lamb Chop