Section 2: Describe Yourself When in the right situations, like when there are high stakes, I am definitely a very strong leader. I am extremely interested in this hobby, and I have been collecting for about 2 years. Academics are my strong point, since I get straight A’s. I am interested in some sports, like Track and Field and Karate. Section 2: Involvement and Leadership I am not a member in any real-life clubs, but I am a member of numerous online forums where you cannot hold an office on. These forums are Cointalk.com, Findmall.com, Treasurenet.com. Section 5: Your Numismatic Interests I have a wide variety of numismatic interests. My Grandma has a collection of world coins, some of which she let me have. This sparked the Idea of collecting world coins, but world coins aren’t what my collection revolves around. My main interest in collecting is late 1800’s to early 1900’s U.S coins, and some bullion. I started off collecting mere Lincoln wheat cents, but then I started going to coin shows, which are where I got my first silver Eagle. For a short time I was interested in collecting old stock certificates, but then that quickly changed and now my interest is definitely completing a full wheat cent album and collecting Mercury dimes. Section 6: Your Numismatic Interests There were many ways before I started to collect coins that relatives tried to get me to collect coins. Like I said before, my Grandma let me have some of her collection, but I didn’t take that too seriously. My parents once bought me a State Quarter album to complete, but that also didn’t spark my interest in collecting. What did make me catch the coin collecting bug was my friend, . It started out at the 4-H county fair, at the collecting exhibit. We were planning to next year submit our collections in order to see whose was more interesting. I, having almost no numismatic knowledge, thought my petite collection of world coins could win a better prize than his monster collection. We both had our good points on why our collections were better than the others, but I eventually admitted that his collection was better once I saw it. The coins in his collections were mind-blowing beautiful. Since then, I have started collecting U.S coins and have gone to many coin shows. Section 7: Your Expectations By going to the summer seminar, I hope to gain a wide variety of knowledge on many numismatic topics. Although I will only be taking one session, I will for sure learn from my peers at the seminar. I am also hoping that I will be attending the auction, so I can put that knowledge to the test and get some great additions to my collection. I also hope to make some new friends. Section 8: Leadership I, being a very intelligent individual in the eyes of my peers, tend to be put in a leadership position when it comes to academics. Personally, I usually don’t mind this because I can be patient and my work usually gets my group an A. One time that I clearly remember where someone bothered me in a group was in seventh grade, near the end of the school year. I was put in a group with some of the most annoying people in my class, but I did not complain. I am not going to use the person’s real name, so here is a fake one: Patrick. Patrick can be nice sometimes, but he can be incredibly bothersome. In this situation, Patrick suddenly decided he wanted to be the leader. I was completely against the Idea, and so were the other people in my group, but Patrick stayed as the leader. The project was to make a 3-minute play on bullying. Patrick also decided to do the entire script by himself, and leaving all the other people with no work to do. When he was “finished” with the script, I asked if I could edit it for him. He said no, because I might take some of the “jokes” out of the script. I said I was okay with this, as long as the script was 3 minutes long. Two days before we had to perform our group play in front of the whole class, we got to rehearse our parts. Unfortunately, Patrick did not take into consideration that the play had to be at least 3 minutes long. When he realized this, Patrick bailed out on the group and dumped all the work on me. I was expecting this beforehand, so I wrote a completely different script the day the play was assigned just in case this exact problem happened. I brought it to school, and when I got to the period where I had to write the script, I was instantly assigned leader. Under my orders, everyone got to help write edit script, including Patrick. The script for the play was completed in just one day under me, and it was a huge success. Section 10: Essay I will pick essay number 2, which will be attached on a different piece of paper. Section 11: I have not been a previous scholarship Recipient. Section 12: Benefit Auctions for YN Scholarship Fund 1. Lot viewing 2. Finance 3. donations 4. Running and Recording 5. Cataloging Section 10 Essay To many of my peers, my intellectual level appears to be among geniuses like Albert Einstein or Isaac Newton. Many people would be surprised to know that this is not true about me. According to them, being a genius only requires quick and semi-accurate thinking. I think it takes a lot more. In order to be a genius, you must have had an interesting childhood, say and event that inspired you to become who you are, even though you had a rough life. I did not have any huge inspiring events or a big turn around and suddenly become very smart, so I would not qualify for being a genius. Even in school, I am not at the very top. In fact, I would say I would be average or only a little bit smart. I am at the average math level and maintain good grades, nothing special. It is beyond me what goes through my peer’s brains when they say I am the smartest kid in school. The thing that started making people think I was the re-incarnation of Albert Einstein was probably from me winning a memorization contest in science class. I may have a good memory, but that’s about it. After researching for a while, I have come to a conclusion similar to what I have written before. What makes me look smart in their eyes is simply the fact that they are impressed by some of my academic skills. Even someone with little knowledge on most subjects could impress someone in the way that I did. All that I had done was do something better than most other people, and it is possible for anyone to do what I had done. I have told people that I was not as smart as they think before, but they did not believe me. Even some of my teachers think that I am smarter than the average 8[SUP]th[/SUP] grader, and that is something that really bothers me. It puts a lot more pressure on me to do well in school. Me: “Teacher, I’m not sure I did this problem the right way.” Teacher: “Knowing you, you probably did”. This is exactly what happened only a few weeks ago. What eventually happened is that I did do it wrong and the teacher had not bothered to correct me because they thought that I was smart. I am sure that if I told them I needed help on anything, they would be surprised. Situations like what these have pushed me and put an unbelievable amount of stress on my developing 8[SUP]th[/SUP] grade mind. In order to not surprise any of my fellow students, I try to win every science competition I can. It forces me to come into class and lunch and compete with minds far greater than my own. Some stress is even caused by teachers. It seems like they are sure that I would commit myself to every academic afterschool program like a science fair. They also ask only me if I was interested in a chance to get a few points of extra credit, which adds an extra amount of stress to my everyday life. I am sure that if I suddenly gave up on all of the chances for academics that people expect me to do, everyone would be surprised.
Seems pretty solid. Do you have any other hobby-experiences you can include (exhibits, articles, talks, school projects?) these would be good to add if so. Last year was my first year and I was a YN. Only thing I would mention is that the auction isn't a normal auction. Prices tend to go very high as bidders donate to the scholarship funds. For example, a standard copy of a book by Dave Bowers, that you could buy for under $20 sold for over $1000. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, just that you shouldn't be expecting to get many new coins or any good deals. Best of luck. It truly is one of the best experiences I've ever had.
