Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal that marked your transition from

childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.

I see the entire world as an art piece: the way the clouds wisp through the tones of the
sunset, the way the ocean vanishes into a gradient of blues, the way skin tones accentuate a
multitude of deep undertones, everything. Throughout my entire life I have been creating art with
these mesmerizing pigments so that others could possibly see a glimpse of how I understand the
world. Even though art has always been an exceptionally valuable part of my life, it has
continuously been separate from everything else that I have had an irrevocable passion for. It was
not until this past year that I built the bridge between art and science where I truly transformed
into the adult that I am today.
Artic, sapphire, cobalt, azure, indigo, aqua, and cerulean. With the bristles of a paint
brush, I create these hues of blue while wearing my artist apron. With the formation of
phosphomolybdate in nine test tubes, I create these hues of blue while wearing my lab goggles.
While I was piloting a lab in AP Chemistry involving the spectrophotometric determination of
phosphates in water, everything clicked. What was the difference between paint and chemicals?
A paintbrush and a beaker? Art and chemistry? There was none. Both of my worlds molded
together, just as the pigments of blues mold together in the waters of the ocean.
Why would the concentration of phosphates in water ever have to be tested? My question
was answered this past summer at the Stanford Pre Collegiate Summer Institute where I took an
Earth and Environmental Science course. The elaborate tones of blue in the ocean were being
demolished by greens. When an excess of phosphates enter water, algal blooms are formed.
Algal blooms absorb all of the oxygen in the water, ending in the fatalities of all the aquatic life.

This process called eutrophication that is prominent in the Gulf of Mexico is being enhanced by
anthropogenic forces. After coding all of the data I collected in R Studio and creating a blog to
represent this growing issue, I was able to further show my concern about this depletion of
oxygen that is destroying the biodiversity in aquatic regions with the help of art.
Color is universal and art has meaning; the means of creating it is negligible. Like I said,
paint and chemicals are one in the same. I soon found out that copper makes an excellent canvas
and chemicals are as hypnotic as paint. Changing color through reaction is a dynamic process
where chemistry takes the stage. Warm hues burst on the copper and then, suddenly, flow into an
array of cool values. By using the kinesthetic forces of chemistry, I was able to form a perception
the same way I do with the aesthetic forces of art. The eutrophication problem that I represented
using computer coding can now be visualized in the series of art pieces that I have made. Now
the viewer can see a graph of how the eutrophic waters in the Gulf of Mexico have been getting
increasingly worse along with a copper canvas that displays reverential shades of what the algal
blooms look like.
When I went to the coast, I stood in the oceanic waters and was consumed by the serene
colors that diverged into the horizon and dipped over the earth's edge. When I went to art school,
I sat at my easel and was consumed by the majestic pigments that wandered into the canvas and
formed an array of ideas. When I went to Chemistry class, I watched at my lab station and was
consumed by the brilliant hues that reacted in the test tube and transformed into a new substance.
Now, as an introspective adult, I built the gap between art and chemistry as I am consumed by
the shades of chemicals that create a masterpiece and mark my most vital accomplishment.