My passion is art. Art is so important. I believe it's not given enough credit. To be honest I often find myself cringing internally when I say the sentence "I'm an artist" due to many negative stereotypes but art is so important. Art comes in many forms: paintings, sculptures, jewelry, fashion, music, poetry, and architecture, to name a few. Art is an outward expression of inward feelings. it's powerful and moving and connects with every individual in a different personal way. Art has no language barrier, age limit, or cultural constraint. It can be appreciated by every kind of person. My passion is art. I create art with many different mediums. My favorite mediums right now are paintings, music, jewelry, and clothing. While I know that art in general already makes the world a better place (my reasons listed above) I hope that one day my personal art will impact the world. If I had an extra 24 hours in the day I’d spend them sleeping, creating, and living slower. As a high school senior and dual credit student, I don't get very much sleep. Sleep is at the bottom of my list of priorities. However, I think more of it would be very beneficial for my health, productivity, and overall mental well-being. That being said, because I don't have an extra 24 hours in the day, I don't plan on changing my sleeping habits any time soon. I would also spend my extra time pursuing my passions. When I'm creating things I feel like myself, my efforts and ideas have an outlet, and I feel productive. In the most obnoxiously corny way, creativity transcends time. The last way I would spend this extra time is by living slower. I live a very fast-paced, chaotic life (I'm homeschooled). I often have to work on things up until the last minute, skim books, throw things together, and do things "good enough". There are many aspects of my life that I rarely have enough time to appreciate. Honestly, I sometimes don't have enough time to actually learn what I'm "learning" because I'm too busy just doing the work I have been assigned and I wish it wasn’t like that. I would spend this time living life slower learning, appreciating, and breathing. I feel the most creative between the hours of 12:00 and 4:00 AM. This is another big reason I need more sleep. I also pull most of my inspiration from people. The night after I have spent the day out and about is especially productive. I love to people-watch. The public is my muse. Everyone is very interesting and inspiring. But I have six people in my family and all of them are very distracting and like to make noise. (Don't forget I'm homeschooled). I love my family, but once they are all asleep I can really focus. The house is quiet and I have also gotten enough work done during the day that I don't feel guilty spending time on other things. All my ideas and inspiration build up all day long. I often don't go to sleep until after the birds are singing. Once I'm alone with my creativity I can let it all flow out through my hands.

If I could have everyone in the world read one book, I think it would be: Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About The People We Don't Know. by Malcolm Gladwell. This book is about our interactions with people we don't know. It is one big testament to how our society makes inaccurate and invalid assumptions about people every day. People think they are good at reading others when in reality we are not! Gladwell goes in-depth about many cases in which a crucial judgment of someone's character was wildly wrong. An example of this is Ana Montes, who worked for the US Defense Intelligence Agency for over a decade and all the while was feeding US secrets to Cuba. It was only after she was found out that the DIA realized that even though everybody had trusted her, red flags were there all along. Another example is In 1938 Neville Chamberlain, then Prime Minister of Britain, met with Adolf Hitler to try and get a read on Hitler’s character. After some time spent together, Chamberlain concluded that Hitler was trustworthy. We all know how wrong he was... The big issue is, Gladwell explains, that we are overestimating our ability to judge what people are thinking or feeling. Humans naturally believe that others are telling the truth, we are incapable of telling when someone is lying. One reason we’re so bad at judging people is that everybody expresses their emotions and thoughts differently. Grief, happiness, and deception look different on everyone. We are all individuals with diffent minds and different ways of feeling things. We can't accurately judge a book by its cover so we need to stop trying. This book is not only extremely interesting it's also a great resource to go back to again and again, it teaches the reader how to tell when one is making bad assumptions about people. the best quote to sum this up is “The conviction that we know others better than they know us—and that we may have insights about them they lack (but not vice versa)—leads us to talk when we would do well to listen and to be less patient than we ought to be when others express the conviction that they are the ones who are being misunderstood or judged unfairly”-Gladwell. This book applies to everyone and everyone needs to read it.

@paloma56788

My name is Naomi de Koning and I love people. I love learning from people, watching people interact with other people, and helping people. People are so interesting to me. Everybody is so different in the way they think, reason, and overcome problems. I have learned so much from merely watching and listening to people. Everyone has their ideas and worldviews. The more perspectives one understands, the wiser and more equipped they are for a life full of different people. I'm very excited to meet new people at college. I think it is going to be an amazing opportunity to learn from like-minded people and not. I plan on getting a business degree because I have a very entrepreneurial mindset. I'm always thinking up new business plans. I love to solve problems and make money off my solutions. When I was 12, I was on a swim team. For every swim competition, my teammates and I would write on each other's backs (with Sharpie): "Eat my bubbles" (a riff off "Eat my dust"). This was our form of team spirit until an opposing team complained about it. We were all banned from writing it on ourselves anymore. Many people were disappointed at this news. We no longer had a way to show team spirit until I had an idea. My idea was to create a way to easily draw our team logo on each other. I traced the logo onto some cardboard, laminated it (to make it waterproof), and cut out the shape of a galloping horse (our team was the Stallions). Now I had a stencil. The next swim meet, I brought my stencil and Sharpies and I spread the word. Very quickly It was popular and I charged 50 cents per "tattoo". Every swim meet, my stencil and I were popular, and after every meet, I went home with a pocket full of coins. This was my first experience with the concept of business. I think a business degree will be a great way to equip me with resources for my aspirations, and because it's already something I am very interested in, I think it will be fun too! I want to own and run many businesses one day, selling a physical product, a service, or both. I want to solve problems and sell my solutions. While the idea of owning and running businesses excites me, I also want it to be my way of meeting, understanding, and helping people. I am passionate about business because I am passionate about people.

If I could have everyone in the world read one book, I think it would be Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About The People We Don't Know, by Malcolm Gladwell. This book is about our interactions with people we don't know. It's one big testament to how we, as a society, make inaccurate and invalid assumptions about people every day. People think they are good at reading others when in reality, they are not! Gladwell goes in-depth about many cases in which a crucial judgment of someone's character was wildly wrong. An example of this is Ana Montes. She worked for the US Defense Intelligence Agency for over a decade, and all the while was feeding US secrets to Cuba. It was only after she was found out that the DIA realized even though everybody had trusted her, red flags were there all along. Another example: in 1938, Neville Chamberlain, the current Prime Minister of Britain, met with Adolf Hitler to get a read on Hitler’s character. After some time spent together, Chamberlain concluded that Hitler was trustworthy. We all know how wrong he was... The big issue is, Gladwell explains, we are overestimating our ability to judge what people are thinking or feeling. Humans naturally believe that others are telling the truth, and we are often incapable of telling when someone is lying. One reason we are so bad at judging people is that everybody expresses their emotions and thoughts differently. Grief, happiness, and deception look different on everyone. We are all individuals with diffent minds and different ways of feeling things. We can not accurately judge a book by its cover, so we need to stop trying. This book is not only extremely interesting, but it is also a great resource to go back to again and again. It teaches the reader how to tell when one is making bad assumptions about people. The best quote to sum this up is, “The conviction that we know others better than they know us—and that we may have insights about them they lack (but not vice versa)—leads us to talk when we would do well to listen and to be less patient than we ought to be when others express the conviction that they are the ones who are being misunderstood or judged unfairly”-Gladwell. This book applies to everyone and everyone needs to read it.