Creative Definition of Yourself

So for Northwestern I have to write something creative about myself and it reminded me of my college application essay for Eugene Lang, where they asked you to write a creative definition of yourself. This was my response(slightly edited, of course):

Right now, I'm approximately seventeen and six months old. 6,385 days have shaped and added to the layers of my life. Every single of those days.

They say before you die, you see your entire life flash before your eyes. Can 6.385 and even more days be summed up in that last nanosecond before you're gone? I think that it's more like flashes of the clearest memories, the ones that stick in your mind and you don't know why—

Like coloring dinosaurs orange in my coloring book the day my sister was born.

Like getting lost on the first day of high school on way back home (it seemed fitting).

Like meeting people who are so different but share similar traits.

My friends and I were liked by experiences and interests. Always, there were things to talk about within the group of unlikely friends.

Now, you're reading this and you know random bits of my life, but you're thinking, "wait, but, who are you?"

This isn't an autobiography. This isn't an exact definition of 'Nadia Chaudhury.' This is just me simply writing about myself.

Who am I?

I'm a contradiction to my astrological sign. The fiery red Aries doesn't even come close to describing me. I'm not effervescent, stubborn or utterly confident. I'm more like the watery blue Pisces—imaginative, selfless and compassionate.

I want to make an impact on the world: a silent one through words, a revolution of words that move people in ways they're not quite sure of.

I get frustrated easily, I do nice things for people because I feel like it, I walk around with a book constantly, I shut myself off when I'm upset, I hop up and down when I'm excited, I like compliments but I don't take them easily, I write and I forget about everything else and I look to the future with expectation and fear.

I like freedom with just a pinch of guidelines, just so I know what I'm doing.

I'm used to writing words with a poetic form, where words are written in s t y l e s that directly affect the way you see them(&feelthem).

I could also adjust and write with more structured forms, using 'one' instead of 'you' and refraining from using 'I.' I could write introductions and conclusions with body paragraphs to elaborate the clearly stated thesis.

I can adapt.

I can learn.

That's what life is for—experiencing and learning from different situations that you go through and how you respond to them. Already, I've learned that ignoring things will not make them better. I've learned that you shouldn't try to live up to others' perceptions of you, but instead, live up to your own.

There's so much more in life for me to learn from. What's better than writing about the things you know, the things you've been through, the things you've seen? Then the readers, my readers, could get a taste of Nadia through my words, because of scattered ideas and dialgoues, of people and situations that came directly from my life.

Every moment has its own effect. Learning how to read led to reading a book a day because I couldn't get enough. Creating my own form of script when I didn't really know how to write while underneath the dining room table led to writing nonstop on the train.

All of this, all 500+ words, it's just the beginning of the answer of who I am.

[And after rereading/retyping this, I've realized how much and how little I've changed at the same time.]