me and my life
I, Secil Topak, was born on July 28th, 1984 in Istanbul, Turkey. As the youngest and therefore luckiest child of the family, I have a brother, Serdar (23), an electrical engineering and economics major, and a sister, Sezin (21), an economics and Italian major, who have traveled through a very similar path of education I am still at. After my graduation from the Kalamis Public Elementary School, I was able to attend the German High School of Istanbul due to my success (I was in the top 150 among 15million) in the standard placement test for private high schools. This was one of the most important turning points of my 19-year-long life. Exploring the German language along with the European culture, I became highly interested in art in my high school years. In the 6th grade, I started taking piano lessons and joined the school’s choir where I, a mezzo-soprano, contributed to the performance of Carmina Burana by Carl Orff with the accompaniment of the National Symphony Orchestra of Istanbul. After 8th grade, I shifted my interest from piano to classical guitar under the influence of my best friend Melda who is an advanced classical guitar player. This decision was a second turning point in my life since I had to face a new understanding of musical aesthetic as I moved from keys to strings. However, it didn’t last for too long until I fell in love with this instrument which has a longer history and thus a richer mosaic of immortal pieces than the piano. In less than a year, I was able to play some of the well-known pieces and had the opportunity to perform in a student concert given for the 76th anniversary the founding of the Republic of Turkey on October 29th, 1999. My unexpected poor performance in this concert formed the theme of my autobiographical college application essay allowing me to be at where I am right now- Duke University, Durham NC. As our conductor Ms. Von Manteuffel left the German High School of Istanbul, I chose to quit from the choir and made a new start with the Dance Club in 9th grade. Having loved the team work in my former experience with the choir, I was delighted to be a part of this performing group for I wanted to keep team spirit in my life. However, my academics won the battle at the beginning of 11th grade and I left the Dance Club like a number of my peers. This solitary confinement was the third and the biggest turning point in my life where I lost the extra-curricular I had valued more than anything else.
It was the following summer when my encounter with individualism reached its apex as I attended the Harvard Summer School. Despite the fact that it was my fourth summer school experience (8th grade- Ceran Lingua, Berkshire UK; 9th grade- ELS Language Center at Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia PA; 10th grade- ASA at Stanford University, Palo Alto CA), I was surprised about the amount of the effort I had to put into my work, and it was hard for me to spend most of my time with myself in order to achieve the best. Nonetheless, I could cherish my solitariness at the end of the course for I used this opportunity to explore more about “the self” as I learned a lot about the different psychological approaches through the introductory psychology class I took there.
I made the decision about coming to
Duke easily because I had two former Dukies, my brother (Class of ’03)
and my sister (Class of ’04), as leading examples ahead of me. Now that
I want the team spirit I lost two years ago back in my life, I plan to major
in biomedical engineering in
Pratt School of Engineering. Taking Duke’s worldwide reputation in
Liberal Arts into account, I also consider
economics as a second major and political
science as a minor.
an authobiographical work-"the moment"
the interesting and the beautiful