Telluride Association: Founded in 1911 by LL Nunn, Telluride Association is a nonprofit organization that creates and fosters educational communities that teach leadership and service through democratic participation.
TASP: A Telluride Association Summer Program (TASP) is a six-week educational experience for high school juniors that offers challenges and rewards rarely encountered in secondary school or even college. Each program is designed to bring together young people from around the world who share a passion for learning. Telluride students, or TASPers, attend a seminar led by college and university faculty members and participate in many other educational and social activities outside the classroom.
SO. These are excerpts from my CBTA application essays (read: my application to live in the Telluride House if I attended Cornell)
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The no-draping policy. I'm not clear on how prohibitive this policy is, but I think it's a little silly. As far as I know, our factota were supposed to stop whatever draping they saw...something like that. Personally, I feel that draping helped us bond even more! You can ask almost any TASPer and I bet my left shoe that they will tell you the same thing. Our draping wasn't sexual; it was just fun and comfortable. Plus it was fun to have pillow/blanket fights and jump on people (being careful to not kill anyone, of course). We were also fond of sleeping anywhere BUT our rooms, and if we did sleep in our rooms, it was almost always because we were a) very tired or b) having a sleepover. Our factota encouraged us to sleep in our own rooms, but our sleepovers caused no harm at all. Actually, I do believe said sleepovers cut down on exclusivity to a certain extent because everyone was together, :P.
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After meeting one of the girls in my seminar because she was also from Puerto Rico, I grew even a little more nervous. She was nice and we had things in common, aside from our mother-country, but she’d said she was apprehensive about TASP because it seemed a lot more “nerdy” than another summer program she’d attended the previous year. I left that rendezvous desperately hoping that the people wouldn’t be snobbish, obsessed with their grades and status, and/or condescending. I guessed that they had to be interesting to have been chosen for TASP, so I put my worries in the back of my mind and trusted the committee who selected the students.
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Before I get into the positive criticism, suggestions, and all those things, I really want to make you all comprehend the impact that TASP had on my life. Let me start off by saying that I had NEVER been exposed to such intelligent, dedicated, and incredible people in my LIFE. My school is small, we have about 700 students from Nursery to 12th grade, and I live on a street inhabited mainly by old people, so my contact with a lot of people my age was limited to school. Thanks to extracurricular activities I did get to meet people outside my school-circle, but that’s somewhat of a recent development. For most of my life, my friendships revolved around my school. I had NEVER befriended someone who was Asian or Indian and I had never heard of the Amharic language. My goals for college were existent, but not too well-defined; I knew I wanted to study Communications, but I’d never really looked up colleges or done much research. I had planned to go to Ball State University in Indiana and that was basically it.
Thanks to TASP, my horizons broadened so much. The other students inspired me to strive for more and not settle for Ball State because I had enough potential to get into better and more competitive schools. I developed a network of friends who could advise me about thing related to colleges and standardized tests, or basically anything that I needed guidance on, because they were undergoing the same things as well; they knew all about college, the admissions process, etc, because they’d been educated about it early on and they knew what they were doing, while I was treading on somewhat unknown ground. Aside from the fact that I found people whose goals were similar to mine and who wanted to study in the US (most of my classmates will be staying in Puerto Rico for college), they were all unbelievably fun and interesting. We had deep, philosophical discussions that came naturally and sleepovers where we all bonded and had fun blanket/pillow fights. We had themed dinners and crazy games of Sardines at midnight when mere hours before we’d been tackling each other up at North Campus in games of Capture The Flag.
In essence, my six weeks at TASP were like a little slice of utopia. At the end of my stay there, I felt that Telluride House was my home and I didn’t want to go back to Puerto Rico. Though I love my island and I missed having my own bathroom (HYGIENE! HOW I LOVE THEE!), I couldn’t see myself ever being the same person again. I couldn’t think about how strange it would be to wake up back in my own bed, NOT surrounded by TASPers… about how it would feel to eat without having to stand in line and chatting along the way. How I wouldn’t have 31 other teenagers in the same house to share things with, to go out to coffee shops and have late-night discussions with. I’d have to get back to my regular sleeping schedule and leave behind the crazy meals at midnight and 4 AM. There would not be glasses randomly placed around the house, filled with semi-sweet chocolate chips. There would be no Great Nunnsense Board. There would be no glorious sunsets from the balcony and no ballsy squirrels coming into the house. There would be no Housemeetings and no Pubspeaks…
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I came out of TASP as an improved version of myself. Because of TASP, I feel empowered and determined, focused and willing to take on the world. I’m ready to go out there and conquer my dreams. I have a LOT on my plate this senior year, but I’m organized and working hard to get where I want to be and do what I want to do. I know I’ve stated that I’ll never forget this experience and used the word “amazing” and its synonyms about a gazillion times, but I can’t stress it enough and I don’t think that someone who hasn’t been at one of these summer programs could ever understand the magnitude of its importance and impact in my life and the lives of the other teens that attended. However, at least I can humbly attempt to convey my thoughts about it and let outsiders have a little glimpse into what TASP was and how much it meant to everyone.
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