Thank You, Linda Wang

Some months ago, I spoke with C&EN Senior Editor Linda Wang on the phone about my fateful encounter with Jon Stewart at “The Daily Show.” Although the encounter did not lead to a job, I did wind up achieving my ultimate goal of acceptance to graduate school.

Believe it or not, the encounter with Stewart and Wang’s subsequent Newscripts write-up both came up in my admissions interview (C&EN, Feb. 17, page 56). I discussed the Stewart event in my statement of purpose, so some members of the decision committee followed up on the information, watched the video, and read the Newscripts article. Days later, I was notified that I had been accepted to the Lab2Class program at American University. In August, I began student teaching in a chemistry classroom at Ballou High School in Washington, D.C.

For all of this, I would like to express my most sincere gratitude to Linda and the C&EN team. Your support helped me get into grad school. Over the next few years, I hope this support will allow me to inspire students to pursue science fields even as they leave some of the lowest-performing public schools in the country. I hope to use any and all classroom resources C&EN has for my own classes.

Adam Even Engel
Chevy Chase, Md.