The Zinch Report

This is Part 3 of the All-Star Series. Recently, USA Today came out with their annual All-Academic team, showcasing 20 of the most talented and accomplished high school seniors in America. I was able to catch up with a bunch of them, interviewing them about their high school accomplishments, asking about their college admissions experiences, and begging them to share some of their nuggets of wisdom with y'all. Read my introduction post.

Quick facts:
Felix just graduated from Conestoga High School in Berwyn, Pennsylvania. He will be attending Harvard in the fall. He graduated with a 3.89 GPA (unweighted out of 4.0).

Accomplishments:
His research on the effects of estrogenic agents on Alzheimer's disease won the American Academy of Neurology Research competition; World Piano Competition bronze medalist, Steinway Peace Piano Ambassador; performed on NPR's From the Top; public forum debate captain placed fifth in state; Academic Bowl team captain; Model United Nations team captain; class senator; writing published in Imagine; Focus on Medicine and Stone Soup children's magazine; organizer for annual benefit concerts; China Care Foundation volunteer.

What got you interested in researching about Alzheimer’s disease?
When I was a young child, I didn’t get the usual bedtime stories or fairy tales that all my friends got. Instead, I was enchanted with the heroic exploits of my great grandmother. She was a heroine of the truest sense, working through the dark years of occupation during World War II and protecting her family during the tumultuous Cultural Revolution. Two years ago I was to meet this idol of mine for the first time. But when I entered the room, this woman of almost goddess status in my mind, had clearly changed. By that time she was suffering in the late stages of Alzheimer’s and the woman who once stood up to occupying forces and murderous gangs, could no longer tie her own shoes. I was terrified and yet strangely fascinated at the same time as to how a mind could be changed so completely. From that day on I promised myself to investigate and explore the inner workings of the mind and the diseases that affect it.

Well, did you find anything interesting? You getting close to a cure?
A few years ago, there was a huge media storm and hype over the use of estrogen to fight Alzheimer’s. Several studies came out in succession suggesting a clear relation between estrogen and a delay in onset of Alzheimer’s. And since many women already undergo estrogen therapy to combat symptoms of menopause, it seemed to be the answer to the Alzheimer’s question. However, within a year the true effects of hormone replacement theory came to light. When such therapy increased the risk of cancer and other negative effects, quickly the hype ended and most research into estrogen’s effects on Alzheimer’s died down. My research sought to investigate alternatives to the use of estrogen. We looked at three substitutes, a drug already out on the market to combat osteoporosis, a physiological substitute progesterone, and an environmental estrogen that is ingested by mere contact with most plastics. Our results were actually quite exciting. The osteoporosis drug, which has been FDA approved and already used in treating patients without serious side effects performed even better than estrogen. This thus gives reason hopefully to other researchers to re-investigate estrogens and its effects. Or perhaps this very drug, through this research, could be considered a possible cure in the future.

How in the world did you find time to do everything? You seemed to be involved in a lot. What advice would you have for high school students now who are trying to balance a lot on their plate?
Honestly, I have no idea. People often ask me that question, and I never could give a good answer. My parents always expected the best from me and so I guess I always grew up with that full schedule. But with such a schedule of course comes sacrifice. In my case, it was usually sleep. However as advice to other students, I would strongly recommend against filling up your schedule or signing up for a variety of activities just for the sake of your resume or impressing college admissions officers. I willingly sacrificed spending time with my friends, SLEEP, and my sanity because I loved every thing I did. This is the key to finding time. When you are truly passionate about your activities, you will be willing to spend the time.

For the freshmen who are reading this, I would definitely recommend to join anything and everything you are interested in. During your first year of high school, you have the opportunity to truly find what you enjoy without worrying too much about the schoolwork and grades. As the years progress, you will have to spend more and more time on your classes and will have to pick and choose your activities.

Give us a little excerpt of one of the coolest parts in one of your college application essays. Share the context of it too, if you’d like.
This is an essay I wrote on the volunteering I did at a Chinese orphanage two years ago:

“Oh wow, that thing is high!” At four years old, my imagination was wild, and that night the black piano bench was Mt. Everest. After minutes of hard struggle, I climbed atop the wooden bench, triumphant, but as soon as my eyes fell upon the gleaming 88 black and white keys, all thoughts of mountaineering exploits disappeared. “I wonder what they do,” my inquisitive mind already at work, “What happens if I push – WOAH” The rest, as they say, is history.

The music, the noise rather, drew my parents and the other guests to my debut performance of Loud Noises Op. 43 in G Minor. The proud parents they were, my mom and dad exclaimed that this was undoubtedly the sign of a piano prodigy simply waiting to be found. Years later, my ten year old self was still waiting to be found. I was no fan of practice and I wish I could say I truly was a prodigy. I’m sure even my parents had moments in which they doubted the “sign”, especially when they had to listen to the same annoying melody again and again. In the beginning years, I sat through my lessons in fear as my crazy Russian teacher cried for “EMOTION! Feel ze music tingle your heart!” Terror was certainly tingling my heart, but alas, no music.

On a trip to China at age 12, I biked around the streets of Shanghai, taking in the sights and smells of a vibrant city for the first time. I tried to explain the feeling of exhilaration to my parents that night but could find no words to describe the sensory overload. How does one describe pure emotion? At a loss for words, I could think of no other form of expression, and to my own surprise, began to hum a Chopin melody. It was then that I realized music was infinitely more than mere notes on a page. It is a medium through which complex ideas can be easily expressed, not through words but with notes.

Once, at a concert at Carnegie Hall, my family and I watched in amazement as Lang Lang bounced on a gleaming Steinway, his music reaching into every audience member’s heart, and not letting go until the last chord. When he had finished, I sat stunned in my seat, how I wished to be up there one day! Two years later, I was. As a winner at the World Piano Competition, I was to perform on the greatest music stage in the world, on the very piano Lang Lang and so many other legends had played on. I sat in the hot spotlight, already dripping with sweat from the stifling tuxedo and steaming lights, and suddenly the room became quiet. As my hands lifted, and the audience held their breath for that first chord, I realized that the dread and anxiety that I had felt throughout my years of learning were finally absent.

I thought of all the things I had learned from the piano: the perseverance, the diligence and preparation so required to prepare a tough repertoire. I had learned failure. So many times I sat with my eyes clenched praying that the name the judge was about to call was mine. So many times I let tears fall as the name called wasn’t my own. My reverie was suddenly broken by the thunderous applause of the audience; this time, I was no failure. As I stood and took my bow and looked out across the appreciative audience, the piano taught me one last lesson, love. Through music, I felt the unifying force that brought the great Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart and others together, and finally understood the love and devotion my parents had given me. It is what I feel every time I hear a great piece of music, pick up a new book, debate politics or adorn the white coat in my research lab. It is an awe-inspiring feeling that the giants of music understood intimately and conveyed in their works of art, reaching out to not only tingle my heart but touch all who care to listen.

Who are your heroes?
Honestly, one of my heroes is a balding, middle aged, slightly overweight fictional doctor who no one else seems to like. I am proud to say that Major Charles Emerson Winchester the Third from M*A*S*H is my hero. Since I was young, I wanted to be a doctor, and he was the model for my growth. Of course, if you know M*A*S*H, you know that Winchester is no cookie cutter hero. His character was meant to symbolize all the negative aspects and pitfalls that come with being a doctor. His pretentiousness, self-righteousness and cold focus on the problem rather than the patient served just as strong a lesson as his cool demeanor during crisis, his superb surgical skills and the blinding compassion that occasionally comes out.

What are your long term goals? What do you want to become, professionally and personally?
Crawling along in rags that once were white, Kai Feng reached out, grasping at objects she could see only faintly. She was eight years old, paralyzed from the waist down, and losing her eyesight. Unable to afford a wheelchair, she was forced to drag herself along the filthy floor, but she was only one of the 50 sick children living in the rural orphanage in China where I had volunteered last summer.

The building itself was nightmarish, with walls painted an off-color white, smeared with the dirty handprints of passing children and corridors filled with sights I still sometimes see when I close my eyes: a seven-year-old pulling out and eating without noticing what was left of hair from her nearly-bald crown; a three-year-old with a case of hydrocephalus so dire the circumference of his head measured 57 centimeters; and huddled in a corner, a five-year-old who had lost her eyes at birth, sitting immobile, her empty sockets wrapped in a dirty cloth. These were some of the most unfortunate human beings I have ever met, and I wondered how many more of these utterly forgotten children were in this world. I found myself wondering what I could do to bring hope to these children and many more like them, all who are suffering in silence simply due to the lack of funds and global awareness.

Since the age of 6, I had dreamed of becoming a doctor. I often imagined myself in a spotless white coat, walking up and down bright hallways in immaculate white hospitals, brushing shoulders with the characters of ER. Physicians, in my mind, were nothing short of Godly and my deepest desire was to join the ranks of medical doctors.

However, not till I met Kai Feng, did I realized how much more medicine meant than clean rooms and lab coats. I found that a patient’s life and hopes are more dependent on a physician’s non-conditional care and the compassion a doctor is willing to give than three CCs of that drug or bandages and splints. In a doctor’s arsenal, I realized, the best medication is found in the heart, for hope has the potential to cure all.

One day, Kai Feng asked me to take her into the small garden in the orphanage’s backyard. I carried her on my back and reached down to pluck flowers as she called out the colors. She seemed so happy and kissed the petals of every flower. When she had a whole armful of flowers, she turned to me and whispered, “Can you fix me?” How I wished I could pull out a magic wand and just tap her legs back to life and clear the blurry world around her… “It’s okay,” she giggled after moment of my hesitation, “One day, I’ll get all better, and then we can go to a field full of these flowers and see all the colors in the world!”

Whenever I think now of my future career in medicine, I cannot help but recall that moment of my pause, that hope on Kai Feng’s face. Here was a girl so ready to believe that help was on the way when, in fact, there was none. There should have been. There should have been a doctor present to help all of those children, tending to their daily urgencies, and working to improve their lives. In the modernized society of today, people too often think that an “M.D.” following their names means a high salary and bragging rights at the dinner table, thus losing sight of the human aspect of medicine, and forgetting altogether the true reason we need doctors. Nevertheless, there are still those unsung heroes with organizations such as “Doctors without Borders” or the Red Cross who selflessly volunteer their time and their care to those who are not able to compensate them with monetary reward. The reward these doctors and nurses are receiving is a better world. That is worth of what I hope to work for.

In addition to my intended major in the life sciences at Harvard College next fall, I intend to study international relations, for such knowledge is essential in the new globalizing world we live in today. It is not a difference in temperament among the two peoples, but rather the cultural norms and governmental apparatuses that allow such children to fall through the gaps. But before change can occur, my generation, the future world leaders, captains of industry and citizens of the world must first realize this must crucial and fundamental fact; these countries can still be helped. I have since worked with children’s hospitals in Shanghai to accomplish just that, establishing an International Clinical Internship program that brings students interested in health care from around the world to China to work with doctors treating these forgotten children, and showing the world that hope is not lost for these developing nations in providing a more universal health care system.

In the future I hope to expand on this program, and establish a formal hospital in China that will serve as a foundation and start to an awakening of the world to the health crisis that lies in the shadowed heartlands of every country; for the forgotten voices of those children in China can be found throughout the world and in our own backyards. Perhaps my view of medicine and international relations are idealistic. But then my goal, my mission in life is to change the international health care system to that very ideal. May we never forget that doctors should be where patients are; location, environment, or society should not be limiting factors but catalysts for medical care. How else will we ever be able to take a little girl to her field of flowers?

I hear you are quite the musician. Where is the coolest place you have ever performed? Any interesting stories?
I must say performing at Carnegie Hall was definitely an experience to remember. Just thinking that the piano before me and the stage I was on had once hosted such greats as Horowitz and even Julie Andrews was a humbling feeling. It was also amazing to look at the concert schedule and see that Lang Lang was playing on the same stage and piano three hours after me.

Once, before a performance at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, I was warming up in the dressing room back stage. After the performance, I realized I left my bag in the practice room but when I got there the door was guarded by a burly looking guard. He told me I wasn’t allowed in because Murray Perriah, the famous pianist, had already begun practicing for his performance that night. I figured I would just have to let the Kimmel Center know, and have them ship me my bag later. But as I was walking down the hallway, the door opened, and out came Murray Perriah himself and gave me my bag with the words “great playing….see you around”.

What advice do you have for high school students trying to get into their dream school? Any college admissions nuggets of wisdom you’d like to share?
Recently I’ve noticed with each new class entering my high school that there seems to be more and more focus on getting into “that” school. In years past, it was a tradition for seniors to place their name next to their college pin on a big map of the United States that was placed in the lobby of our school. This year however, the school mandated that no names were to appear next to their college pins. Instead, seniors were asked to just put an anonymous thumbtack in its place. The school said the reason was to prevent any bad feelings or in case “students were embarrassed by where they were going to college”. This is the new trend in college admissions that worries me. Of course, as the student attending Harvard next year, my friends always scoff whenever I gripe about the college admissions process.

But I believe, that it is okay to have a dream school, in some ways it is essential, as a goal to keep in mind to help drive you forward, but a school should not have a hold on who you are or who you want to be. Do not define yourself to a school, if you do, you just may lose sight of what is truly important. If, when that time comes, you don’t get into that “school” don’t feel as if you have failed or that you are going to a school that you won’t fit into. Every school will have that special something you will fall in love with soon enough.

As for admissions advice, START EARLY. I began writing my essays during the summer of my junior year. At first I thought it was a little absurd but I soon realized how much easier my admissions process became. Begin writing in the roughest form around May or June and leave them for a month. By the time the admissions crunch comes along, you will have a few good essays for you to use, and you will have the benefit of editing them cold. Meaning you will be able to see mistakes etc. that you normally wouldn’t have picked up had you just written it. This makes for a much better piece at the end. Starting early also gives you a peace of mind because no matter what, the process will be stressful.

What is your most memorable experience about high school?
My greatest memory of high school doesn’t come from the classrooms or the textbooks but rather time spent outside of school in different activities with friends in an environment I probably wouldn’t be able to find in college. Whether it be at the Model U.N. conference in the middle of Washington D.C. or just being with friends at the movie theater, these are the things I will remember. So my advice, have fun during high school. You have all your life to work, enjoy life outside of the classroom while you can!

What do you think about Zinch.com? Do you believe students are more than just test scores?
I have been hoping and looking for this type of site for a long time now, and I’m so glad to have finally found Zinch.com. There has been too much of an emphasis placed on test scores and hard numbers. A true measure of a student cannot be boiled down to mere numbers. Too many times I have encountered kids who see themselves as mediocre because of a number. I myself was never the fabulous test taker. I took the SAT three times and my grades, though acceptable were never top of the class. I focused my energy and time on my passions outside of school and thankfully, colleges saw that and liked it. I’ve gotten into MIT, Yale and Harvard without ever breaking 2300 on the SATs, a 670 on one of my SAT IIs, and a 3 on one of my AP tests. Most would say just one of those would be an instant rejection. Clearly scores aren’t everything.