The quote from Robin Sharma in the description of this scholarship is particularly apt for my idea of my dream life. Despite my polymathic nature, my greatest interest dwarfs most of the others, and so my dream life consists mainly of studying ancient texts and deciphering them, of course for the sheer enjoyment I get from it (the "impractical" part of the quote), but also because the more we understand about the past and its civilizations, the more we stand to learn about the present and how our society works, and with that knowledge comes the ability to help shape the world into a better place (this is, of course, the contrasting "practical" part of the quote). To be able to continue my schooling, and, hopefully, to earn a Ph.D. eventually, would be one of the most satisfying things I could do, and I think that there's no better way to do it than by studying the cultures of the past, in order to inform us about the present.

My favorite form of art is undoubtedly the one I'm most proficient in—music—and within it, my favorite period must be the Romantic Era, my favorite form the concerto, and my favorite concerto Saint Saëns's second, for the piano. This takes its place as my favorite concerto, necessarily because it was the first one I ever managed to listen to in its entirety, or because it was written by one of my favorite composers, but also because it is what finally inspired me to sit down and compose my own serious music—that is—while I had written music before, it was always less serious, in a way, than what I wanted to compose, and this work was such a masterpiece that I could not help but try my hand at writing my own. Another reason I've continued to enjoy it for so long is the (seeming) effortlessness of playing it, and that it's so easy to listen to. This is actually the reason the Rach 3 loses out on being my favorite, because anyone who's played it will tell you that it is a beast of a thing to reckon with, and because it took almost a week before I was able to listen to the whole piece without being overpowered by the dissonance. Saint Saëns, however, is able to create a cohesive and yet very contrasting soundscape, and it never feels overwhelming or heavey-handedly written. It is this particular balance and inspiring quality which draws me back every so often, and keeps it as my favorite piece of music, and, in my opinion, one of the greatest works of art in general.

My most valueable quality, even ahead of a work - ethic, enjoyment of what I study and work on, and ambition, is undoubtably my ability to learn things and recognize patterns quickly — especially when it comes to my main area of study, linguistics. It's immensely helpful for historical and comparative linguistics, because it allows me to quickly understand the basics of a language's grammar, and so, with access to a textbook or written grammar and a dictionary, I can quite easily 'decode' text written in ancient languages, even when I don't have much experience with them at all. A thorough understanding of where our modern languages come from and how they relate to each other, coupled with the personal experience that I will gain through time and careful study, will also help me to become a proficient translator and interpreter. My studies of modern language (mostly Spanish, though many other Indo-European languages come very naturally to me as well) are also aided by pattern recognition; it allows me to quickly adapt to different accents and dialects without compromising my understanding, which would serve me well as an interpreter — both because of the wide variety of people I would need to adapt to interpreting, and because of the rapid manner in which it must be done. Apart from language and linguistics, however, a strong perception of patterns can — and has — aided me in creating and understanding some of the algorithms needed in areas of computer science, and facilitates optimization by means of allowing me to see these patterns and reduce them into compact, understandable, and effecient processes. Combined with the enthusiasm for linguistics, my understanding of computers can help me to do research in machine translation, which grows ever - more important each day as the use of the technology grows, and as more and more people are connected via the Internet, who may not share the same, or mutually intelligable, languages. This facet of my studies is so valueable, for international communication, for personal communication, and for easy transmissions or scientific research from one language into others in order to be more accessible to more people, that I think it unnecessasary to detail it here. In sum, a sense of pattern recognition, coupled with a knack for learning things quickly, is my most valueable trait, not only because it makes convinient the study of various topics, but because it is not only helpful, but almost necessary, in the fields in which I would like to work.