My name is Benjamin Coffey and I am pursuing a mathematics major with a computer science minor as a part of the STEM Exploration and Engagement Scholars.  I have an extremely analytical and logical mind, but I also enjoy things like reading, writing, and athletics.  Education has always been an important part of my life, but I have also made a point to expand my knowledge base through involvement in scouting, sports, creativity, and service.

As a boy scout, I completed my Life Scout and held leadership roles including patrol leader, service coordinator and Quartermaster.  I was the Crew Leader for our 79 mile canoe trip in the border waters of Canada, and the Environmental Guide for our 89 mile hiking trip in the mountains of Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico.  Both of these trips taught me how to think on the fly, how to lead a group of people that were in a stressful, hard environment, and how to persevere no matter how tough the job gets.  My career as a scout however wasn’t a very smooth one as scoutmasters came and went, and none of them seemed to understand the concept of a boy led troop.  I went to National Youth Leadership Training during the summer of my freshman year of high school, and what I learned there was that a troop can run without the parents and the scout leaders taking over.  I learned that my scout troop had been doing things the wrong way the whole time.  This was incredibly frustrating, but I found myself fighting to get the experience that scouting is supposed to be, not what the parents made it.  I was continually building my leadership skills, asking to plan camping trips, leading meetings, and getting involved as much as possible.  Eventually the stress of not being able to lead the troop like I thought I should have been allowed to, and the introduction of rowing to my life pushed me out of the troop when I was only one step away from obtaining my Eagle Scout.

I have played sports throughout my young life and from year to year the sports I played varied greatly.  I have played baseball, basketball, soccer, and football, but none of these compares to my love of rowing.  Rowing is one of the most difficult yet rewarding things I have ever done.  It requires incredible amounts of dedication and effort, hours and hours of practice with each and every stroke being better than the last.  Practices in high school were 2 hours 6 days a week while high school practice lengths vary based on the season.  I have struggled with the sport, especially when it is too cold to row on the water and we are stuck on indoor rowing machines.  The sport is toughest then as the rower is able to watch exactly how fast they are going and decide whether or not they can go faster.  The thing that this taught me was that no matter how much it hurt, it was always possible to go faster, to put in a little extra time and a little extra effort and drop some time.  Even after 4 years in the sport, I am much better with this.  It used to be that my mind would stop me before my body would, but I believe that I have reached a point where my body fails before my mind, allowing me to put literally every ounce of energy I have into each stroke, making myself as fast as I can be.

Some of my favorite things to do in my free time when I’m not volunteering at a local church, studying, or rowing, are playing chess, the game clue, or video games.  These things all appeal to my logical mind and I love the puzzles involved, yet they are not the only way I spend my time.  I also love to write.  Writing and reading are some of the greatest stress relievers out there.  Just opening a book and looking into a new world or creating the world myself allow me to siphon off the jumbled thoughts in my mind and clear my head a bit.  I have even written a book, though I have not published it yet.  This book was a product of my International Baccalaureate education.

The International Baccalaureate Diploma program is one of the most strenuous academic routes in high school.  The program enforces an education with a global perspective with an emphasis on how to gain and use knowledge, not just how to memorize some words on a page.  During the program I wrote a college level research paper in every subject, including two in physics and my personal favorite, a paper on the concepts behind and a geometric proof of the Banach-Tarski Paradox.  As a class we focused on open discussion about the topics we were learning in class, enhancing the knowledge that the teacher gave us and reinforcing it with our own ideas and discoveries.  The program taught me not just how to collaborate with others, but how to question and debate what we seemingly already know.  I learned how to express my thoughts and ideas intelligently both on paper, in speech, and in practical conversation without falling into a trap of fallacies.  The process was not simple however as I learned early on, time management skills became paramount and working ahead was necessary to keep up.  Despite the struggles, the knowledge that I gained and how the program molded me into an intelligent learner are extremely important to who I am becoming.  Parts of the program that may have seemed superfluous at the time have become some of my feature characteristics.  The creativity aspect increased the time I spend writing and drawing and the action aspect manufactured a love of staying fit and active in me, enhancing my passion for rowing.

Writing, reading, games, scouting, sports, and above all school have made me who I am, and the skills I have learned from them are numerous.  Between rowing, scouting,  service, free time activities, and the International Baccalaureate Diploma that is now hanging in my room, I have become an intelligent, dedicated hard-worker with an already broad range of experiences.