I found out today I was accepted to UT! I was very happy.

I actually had no idea what to think. The application was a last-minute affair; nobody proofread it for me and I even forgot to attach my academic resume.

I find myself curiously spelling my words in Britain-style today. Mostly theatre and colonise. Strange.

In any case, for your undoubted viewing pleasure, here's an essay I wrote for the UT application.

The stated requirements:

Many students expand their view of the world during their time in college. Such growth often results from encounters between students who have lived different cultural, economic, or academic experiences. With your future growth in mind, describe a potential classmate that you believe you could learn from either within or outside a formal classroom environment.

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Jakhongir was too hard to say, so I called him John. He was rich, he spoke four languages fluently and I felt certain his dad was in the mafia. He and I were students at Handong Global University, an upstart Christian institution in South Korea.

For me, the decision was easy to spend a semester in Korea. I came from a Christian college in Texas. But my friends in the States still laugh when I tell them that my best friend in Korea was John, a Muslim from Uzbekistan. He and I were like night and day, but somehow, we clicked.

John loved wisdom. I believe that, though he would probably laugh if he could read this essay. There is no doubt in my mind that he came under intense pressure from friends to convert to Christianity, to conform his ideas this way or that.

Instead of skirting the issue or ranting obnoxiously, he engaged others with an idea to hear their reasoning, and if it wasn't sound, he would pinpoint it.

He could differentiate ideas and put them in their place, in class or in a casual conversation on the porch. I remember one time he quite seriously said that someday, when he had a family, he wanted me to come and be a tutor for his children.

"Why?" I asked, thinking he would want someone he knew better for such a position.

"Because I don't want them to think like everyone else in my country. I want them to be international."

I would often ask him what his life was like in Uzbekistan. He had some telling insights, but he was inexcusably ethno-centric.

One time he said, "I'll tell you, the best tasting food and the most beautiful women in the world are in Uzbekistan. You just have to see them for yourself."

"But John, most Americans can't even find your country on a map. If that's true, shouldn't they be able at least to do that?"

"That doesn't mean anything." And then he pulled out his favorite joke to describe the internationality of the dormitory.

"If you know three languages, you are trilingual. If you know two languages, you are bilingual. If you know one language, you are an American."

Even if he mixed up the issue, I also respected his motivation, his get-up-and-go. He told me about his IT work in Dubai, about switching schools and learning a new language in junior high just so he could understand his teachers.

I had done comparatively little travel at the time and was impressed personally with his spunk. Before college, he could fly to the Middle East and get a high-paying job because of his English and technical skills. I grew up on an east Texas farm. What was I doing?

I also noted his lifestyle. He wasn't living off his rich father, partying in Uzbekistan, or staying in a ritzy apartment, working in the United Arab Emirates.

He wanted to learn, and he wanted to help his country. He knew his country needed it. He wouldn't often speak of it, but it was something I could notice by his presence there.

I haven't spoken with John since I left Korea. But people like him stretch me when I visit a new place. I could not have imagined that growth coming from someone like him, but I internalized it nonetheless.