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Monday June 5, 2017

AN American teen is encourag-ing others to break the mold after reportedly earning a spot at Yale University with an unusual essay about ordering pizza.

Carolina Williams in Tennes-see announced that she had been accepted to the Ivy League school on Twitter earlier this month and shared a copy of her essay that appeared to draw high praise (and laughs) from an admis-sions offi cer.

“I just want @PapaJohns to know that I wrote a college essay about how much I love to order their pizza and it got me into Yale,” she boasted in a Tweet.

The 18-year-old had been tasked with writing about some-thing that she loves to do. Wil-liams said she genuinely loves

ordering pizza, as captured in her essay.

“Accepting these warm card-board boxes at my front door is second nature to me, but I will always love ordering pizza because of the way eight slices of something so ordinary are able to evoke feelings of independence, consolation, and joy,” a portion of her essay reads.

“I came up with the idea all on my own and did not really tell anyone about it,” she told HuffPost by email Thursday. “When my friends found out about it though, they thought it was hilarious.”

Her admissions offi cer appar-ently did, too.

In a letter shared by the teen, the offi cer, who was not named,

said she “laughed so hard” while reading it.

“I want you to know that every part of your application stood out in our process and we are thrilled to be able to offer you a spot at Yale,” the offi cer’s accompanying message reads.

Another handwritten note read: “Yale would be lucky to have you.”

Of course, it wasn’t just Williams’ creative essay that earned her a coveted spot among the 2,272 students accepted by Yale this year ― making a slim, 6.9 percent acceptance rate.

Her application contained all the right ingredients, including a high GPA, volunteer work, as well as memberships with the

English Honors Society, National Honors Society, Model U.N. and Youth in Government, the Ten-nessean reported.

But just as she had many choices on what to write about, she also had choices other than Yale.

In the end, she opted to go to Auburn University instead. One big reason, she shared, is that the Alabama school is much closer to home.

“I absolutely love Yale, but I felt so at home at Auburn,” she told HuffPost. “I love the South and the school spirit. I will be a part of the Honors College. I’m so honored to have been accepted by Yale, though!”

At Auburn, she plans to pursue a business degree while minoring

in economics, she told the Ten-nessean, which also reported that the school provided scholarship opportunities.

(SD-Agencies)

YET another year of the Scripps National Spelling Bee saw a child of Indian descent come out on top with Ananya Vinay of Fresno, California, taking home the cash prize worth US$40,000 on Thursday. The winning word for this year’s contest was “marocain,” which is a dress fabric made with a warp of silk or rayon and a fi lling of other yarns.

Vinay was crowned the winner of the 90th Scripps National Spelling Bee after spelling 35 words correctly. “It was inter-esting to go back-and-forth for so many rounds,” Vinay said.

Oklahoma eighth-grader Rohan Rajeev, also of Indian-descent, was the runner-up after misspelling the word “marram,” a type of coarse perennial grass. Both Rajeev and Vinay went head to head for almost 20 championship rounds spelling their words correctly.

Vinay’s win was the fi rst solo victory in three years at the spelling bee, with the competi-tion previously having ended in a tie since 2013.

The competition has been won consecutively by children of Indian descent for quite some time.

Last year’s joint winners were 11-year-old Nihar Janga from Texas, and 13-year-old Jairam Hathwar from New York, while the 2015 Spelling Bee was won

by Gokul Venkatachalam and Vanya Shivashankar.

Ansun Sujoe and Sriram Hath-war were the 2014 winners fol-lowing Arvind Mahankali’s win in 2013. Snigdha Nandipati won in 2012, Sukanya Roy in 2011 and Anamika Veeramani in 2010.

The 2009 winner was inci-dentally the 2015 joint winner Vanya Shivashankar’s elder sister, Kavya Shivashankar.

Analysts have tried to study how an ethnic group making up less than 1 percent of the U.S. population dominates the Spell-ing Bee. Shalini Shankar, head of the Asian American Studies Program at Northwestern Uni-versity, has been studying this pattern for some years and said the trend of Indian winners is due to them belonging to a minor-league spelling circuit invoking a strong sense of community.

Moreover, the history of South Asians immigrating to the U.S.

also contributes to this ethnic community’s spelling success, Shankar said.

For instance, the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act gave a way for highly trained immigrants from Asia and other regions to meet the need for scientists, engineers and medical professionals in the U.S. Gradually, skilled people from South Asia migrated to the U.S., bringing along their family too.

Currently, South Asian ethnic groups constitute a diverse popu-lation representing a dispropor-tionately high professional class doing very well in education.

Pawan Dhingra, a curator at the Smithsonian Institution’s Asian Pacifi c American Program, said Indian Americans are likely to devote more of their time to competitions and academic achievements, along with the fact living in a tight knit family domain helps in the child’s train-ing. (SD-Agencies)

IS that a bird in the tree? A cat? No, it’s Rocco the dog, who had to be rescued by fi refi ghters when the small dachshund got stuck inside a tree trunk.

Authorities say two off-duty Kentucky state troopers were mowing a cemetery in Salem on Thursday when they heard a dog barking. They looked around for several minutes, and fi nally, they found the pooch — trapped inside the tree.

Apparently Rocco had climbed into a nearby hole dug by a groundhog and found his way up through the tree trunk. That’s where he became stuck.

A fi refi ghter came out and cut part of the tree, safely freeing Rocco.

(SD-Agencies)

MOST people in New York City settle for staring at the many skyscrapers from street level or they buy a ticket to the top of the Empire State Building or the One World Observatory, but not 19-year-old Justin Casquejo. The thrill-seeking teen, who goes by the name @livejn on Instagram, likes to see the buildings from above, frequently while hang-ing from them with one hand, camera in the other.

He made headlines in 2014 for climbing to the top of One World Trade and hanging out there for two hours, literally. Then he was just 16 years old and he somehow managed to get onto the property and up the 104 stories to the top of the building. He was arrested after the stunt but that hasn’t stopped him from climbing. Since then he’s been arrested a few more times for pulling the same kind of stunts.

Thursday evening, Casquejo, made headlines again when he was arrested for scaling another one of the city’s skyscrapers, the Paramount Tower. The Para-mount is a luxury apartment building near midtown Manhat-tan in the Murray Hill neighbor-hood. He was spotted on top of the building around 9 p.m. EDT Thursday, according to the Daily News. Police subsequently arrested him and charged him with reckless endangerment and criminal trespass.

Casquejo is from Weehawken, NJ, and has a pretty big online following. His Instagram account has more than 45,000 followers and his YouTube channel has more than 5,000 subscribers and some of his videos have tens of thousands of views. He and a team of other climbers called “Team Destiny” do the daring climbs together and make videos for their channel.

He calls his climbs art and his Instagram feed is full of photos of him hanging by a hand or leaning off of the tall buildings.

(SD-Agencies)

Teen’s essay about ordering pizza earns Yale offer

Carolina Williams

Man arrested for climbing skyscraper

Dog rescued after being stuck in tree

Battle of Ligny re-enactedParticipants take part in the re-enactment of the Battle of Ligny, in Ligny, Belgium, on Saturday. The Battle of Ligny took place on June 16, 1815, and was the fi nal victory in the military career of Napoleon Bonaparte in which his troops defeated a Prussian force. Xinhua

Indian-descent girl wins Scripps National Spelling Bee

Ananya Vinay (R) receives the trophy.

Rocco