Meet the Minerva Freshmen—Eunjo An

What made you apply to Minerva? 

Following my gap year and the breadth of my experiences throughout my high school years at a United World College (UWC), Minerva’s unconventionality compelled me, particularly in its focus on experiential education that challenged the confinement of learning within the walls of lecture halls. I fell in love with this concept of the city becoming my campus and was further drawn in by the commonly unconventional yet vibrantly diverse student body I knew an institution like Minerva would attract. 

What have you learned about yourself during the application process? 

The application process invited deep introspection—a rather appreciative sort of reflection on the experiences I’d accumulated over the years in retrospect. In representing myself, both as a learner and as a person, through Minerva’s unique application process, I was forced to identify the core values and insights that defined me and highlight them effectively in my selection of accomplishments and approaches to the application challenges. This grew my self-awareness and appreciation of my unique strengths, building confidence in the character I saw myself to be, and belief in the added value I’d bring to the Minerva community. 

What was your favorite accomplishment you mentioned in your Minerva application?

Reading is as easy as ABC, at least, for people like you and me, with fully functional occipitotemporal cortices and Wernicke’s areas of our brains. For people with aphasia, however, it’s a bumpier process. Characterized by impaired language comprehension from acquired brain injury or disease, aphasia makes reading a frustrating challenge. Hence, I started ABC, a book club for which I created aphasia-friendly editions of books that “translated” them into simpler words and sentence structures, with illustrations I drew to bring to life the arbitrary marks on pages we one day agreed to call letters and words with meaning. In this way, ABC became a communication ramp of sorts, helping people with aphasia access and appreciate books to the same capacity as you and I. 

Is there anything you are particularly excited about regarding your first year at Minerva? 

I’m excited to get to call the city of San Francisco home for a year! I hope to make the most of the city—to go cafe-hopping at least once a week, to visit all the book-stores, to make friends with local florists and dancers, to take a nap on every beach and bike across every bridge—I hope to discover pieces of San Francisco that I can put together to create my unique idea of home within it.

What are your first impressions of the Class of 2028 community, of San Francisco?

I’d characterize both Class of 2028 (M28) and San Francisco as being in a “Goldilocks Zone”. The city is in the literal sense of being a perfect in-between of warm and sunny and cool and overcast, as well as a vibrant intersection of culture, nature, and innovation! Likewise, with the M28 community, I’ve found that we are such a dynamically charming bunch, each with uniquely compelling stories to tell, simultaneously inspiring and comforting me every day in the genuine ingenuity we foster. 

What is your favorite Minerva memory so far? 

A sunrise seen from above the clouds atop Mount Tamalpais! Following the first couple weeks in SF (packed with unpacking, orientation, and too many introductions/ice-breakers to count), a group of similarly over-stimulated yet somehow still invigorated hopeful campers, including myself, decided to embark on a spontaneous weekend trip to Mount Tamalpais. After a long night of playing Mafia under the stars, and trying not to get lost on the way back to the tents from the outhouse, we rose early in the morning to the trails that would take us above the clouds for the sunrise. An hour or so later (filled with sleepwalking/talking/tripping, shivering in the cold, and nearly getting swept away by the wind), we reached the summit, where we spent most of our time in silence absorbing the moment in its entirety. We didn’t need a word to be said aloud to appreciate the awe-filled joy in that moment—the wonder of its ephemerality, and the chance of our sharing its transience. 

What advice would you give to future applicants? 

I’d have to borrow the words of Socrates to say: “Know yourself”. See yourself and how you are present in your world—how you will be or could be present in the world that is Minerva, potentially in the years to come. Ask yourself, in earnest, if this version of yourself feels true to you, and if so, I’d encourage you to feel confident to move forward! You are the only person who can “know yourself“, and thus, a strong application that best reflects who you are can only come to be on the basis of a strong and confident understanding of yourself.

If you were inspired by Eunjo's story and are seeking a college experience that will teach you valuable pragmatic skills that will enable you to change the world, apply to join Minerva today.