Shadow World (The Best of Ai)

College Essay: The Biographical Version (E)

I was born and raised in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar, Outer Mongolia, along with four younger brothers.

In 2006, we packed our bags and moved to Singapore where my father had the opportunity to preach in a well-known church. There, I attended my first public school.

Thanks to my teachers, I was lucky enough to develop a lasting thirst for knowledge. I also learned to love reading, and give most of the credit for what I've learnt for my love of it.

We returned home two years later, much to my displeasure, as this meant that I was now in charge of monitoring and assigning most of my own schoolwork. 

After I turned thirteen, I worked part-time as a transcriber for two years before deciding to move on. Though the work itself was dull, the environment I was in taught me the value of effective communication and honesty. I still have friends there today.

I love creativity and enjoy the hard work that comes along with it. Anything to do with film making, acting, writing, editing, dancing, theater or music excites and motivates me. However, I also enjoy subjects that require a lot of intellectual thinking.  Business strategy, economics, sociology, philosophy, religion and logic have always fascinated me. I pursued most of these subjects online, using websites such as Coursera, as my high school doesn't teach them.

Much to my family’s despair, I was an atheist for some time because life was so hard for a time that God seemed non-existant. As Nietzsche puts it, dead. My family is Protestant, so I’ve grown up with the Christian faith since I was a baby. I've always found my own religious views and ideals important, so it was no surprise to me when I began to question them in depth.

Soon enough, I realized that my atheistic view point of life went against everything I knew to be true. There was no meaning in it, and no explanation for the laws of human nature or the moral laws. It didn't match up. Sure, evolution explained some aspects of nature and how we supposedly evolved from monkeys, but that wasn't good enough. How could anyone continue living life as an ‘accident’ of nature’?

So, I took a second look at Christianity. After reading books such as ‘Mere Christianity’ and ‘Summa Theologica’ I had some reason to believe in God. I wasn't all the way there yet--I had no faith. Logic supported my reasons, but faith is also necessary to believe in the existence of anything. Faith, though, much like the ability to reason, is a supernatural gift. Therefore, God can give and you can receive. You simply need but ask.  

Around the same time I was making these discoveries, a close friend advised me to take a closer look at the Roman Catholic Church, and so I did. Some of things I found quite shocked me, since they were so foreign and unknown. After a lot of research, tears of frustration and prayer, I have come to believe one important thing. The Roman Catholic Church is the one true Church founded by Jesus Christ, the son of God. I know more each day and find myself growing closer to God than ever before.

All in all, I’m just an ordinary girl with a crazy long list of interests and a longing to make a meaningful, lasting difference in this world.