*We all contribute to, and are influenced by, the communities that are meaningful to us. Share how you've been shaped by one of the communities you belong to. Define community in the way that is most meaningful to you. This community example can be drawn from your family, school, workplace, activities or interests, or any other group you belong to. (350 words)* A few years ago, I dove into online communities around Personal Knowledge Management (PKM). I became an active contributor on the Obsidian Discord and Logseq Forum, spending hours nerding out with coders and note-taking enthusiasts about query syntax and how properly linked ideas compound over time. When I learned about PKM Summit 2026 in Utrecht, I cold-emailed the organizer to volunteer as a workshop leader. During my session, I shared my setup and proposed integrating PKM into education systems. "This is all beautiful," an audience member asked during Q&A, "but would young people actually benefit from this? Have you tried sharing it with your friends—with more people?" I froze. She'd struck a nerve. I was optimizing a system that felt like mental masturbation. What use was it to anyone else? That challenge pushed me to actually build something beyond my own system and sparked a transformation. I open-sourced and shared all my notes -- more than 500,000 words -- online for public visit; I began writing newsletters sharing what I learned and thought about for my friends; and I began building an app that is basically a simplified version of my note-taking system that I hope to share with more of my friends who were fascinated with my system. What started as building a tool evolved into building a community. Friends began reaching out—some telling me how my notes changed their perspective on a subject they'd struggled with, others sharing their own systems and asking questions. These conversations reminded me that knowledge isn't just about personal optimization; it's about connection and collective growth. The real transformation wasn't in the tools I built, but in the relationships they fostered. I stayed in touch with that woman from the summit, updating her on my progress. Looking back, I'm profoundly grateful she asked that question and supported me throughout. At the end of the day, this is the kind of community that I value most valuable to be in -- those that transform your thinking and pushes you to become a different version. At Cornell, I hope to find more communities like this: spaces where diverse thinkers unite around common goals, supporting and challenging each other to build something meaningful together. Because the best communities don't just accept who you are—they help you discover who you could become. --- *At the College of Arts and Sciences, curiosity will be your guide. Discuss how your passion for learning is shaping your academic journey, and what areas of study or majors excite you and why. Your response should convey how your interests align with the College, and how you would take advantage of the opportunities and curriculum in Arts and Sciences (650 words).* My fascination with knowledge began with childhood notebooks filled with observations and half-formed theories. When I got my first laptop, those paper trails evolved into an interconnected digital ecosystem in my note-taking app. Now I maintain a workspace where journal entries dialogue with shower thoughts, reading notes branch into project plans, and ideas cross-pollinate through deliberate links. Yes, I treat Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) as a living practice, as I believe that the information I received and the knowledge I developed are crucial to who I am and what decisions I make. And yes, I am fascinated by concepts of information and knowledge -- how they come to influence individual actions and shape the world we live in. As an experiment, I challenged the traditional physical model of matter and energy and constructed my own theoretical framework positioning information as the third pillar of reality, attempting to explain phenomena like superposition and entanglement through an information-theoretic lens. The model was amateur, perhaps even naive—but I still believe it revealed something crucial about my early obsession into information. That's precisely why Cornell's Information Science program feels inevitable. After researching dozens of programs, I kept encountering the same frustrating dichotomy: either hyper-technical computer science that treats humans as users to be optimized, or abstract theory disconnected from implementation. However, here in Cornell, the huge hero text in Bower Colelge's website speaks right to my heart:" Exploring the interplay between people and technology." The exact question that matters the most: How does information technology come to influence the human experience? I am especially passionate about choosing the concentration with Interactive Technologies because I have always wanted to build bridges between cutting-edge research and practical, human-centered applications. Also because it perfectly aligns with my current project: a AI-powered note-taking app that understands a student's personal context and helps scaffolds a student's learning. I believe this is deeply connected to Information Science because it's fundamentally about how to help others build their own personal "information system" that helps them deal with all the information in life, quickly learn new things, and make better decisions. The app stemmed from my desire to help my friends who struggle in school better navigate the curriculum, while at the same time create space for true learning where they can find out what do they truly enjoy in life. However, in hindsight, this mission statement can't be more vague and childish. After several early versions with mixed feedbacks, my techo-optimism dawned on me. I realized that technology or an app alone itself cannot solve a fundamentally human problem. Tech without understanding into how learning and thinking really happens just misses the point. That's why I seek to understand the intersection between technology and human behavior—to design tools that truly serve people's needs rather than becoming products nobody wants that do more harm than good. We already have too many products that ignore or misunderstand their customers, that seek to control and manipulate rather than empower. I don't want to just build better tools. I want to understand what "better" means when technology mediates human knowledge, learning, and connection. I want to create systems that empower rather than extract, that respect human agency rather than exploit attention. Beyond the coursework, fundamentally what truly excites me is the intellectual cross-pollination that Information Science makes possible. It’s the chance to work alongside students from other schools and programs—engineers who understand how to actually build scalable platforms, and data science students who know how to turn data into insights. I imagine late-night conversations and whiteboard brainstorming as they challenge my assumptions, push me further when I'm right, and help transform half-formed visions into something real. Cornell's intellectual density makes it possible. I'm ready to move beyond amateur theorizing into disciplined inquiry, to transform my fascination with information into expertise that creates real impact.