At the age of seven, I first learned to play chess, and I was immediately obsessed with it. I would walk the tiles of grocery stores in the fashion of one chess piece or another. I developed my talents very quickly and over the years, became known as a strong player among those I could cajole into playing a game with me.

I attribute my affinity for the game to the way I perceive the world. One cannot become a good chess player without seeing the world spatially. Every piece on the chess board must be defined by what pieces it can attack, where it can move, and what pieces it is protecting. If you are good, you view more obscured relationships such as what moves open or prevent future moves, or how some moves weaken or strengthen a group of pieces as a whole.

These relationships are how I have come to view my own world. I look at my own actions for the reactions of the physical world, like the reactions of an opponent. I define objects by how they move, their reactions to my actions, etc., and this makes me a good mathematician and scientist. When I discovered that objects could be defined in the same ways as chess pieces, I took an interest in physical sciences. I developed and was intrigued by the relationships of numbers as they reminded me of chess.

I sometimes analyze the world as I would game of chess, and I seek to expand my ability to discover the relationships of the world of matter as I enter college.