Personal Scholarship Essay
My name is Eli Thullen, I was born in Oak Park, Illinois in 2008 to my parents Matthew and Lila Thullen. When I was about two years old I was blessed with a little sister as well as a change in scenery when we moved to Mountain Ranch to live on my grandparents property for less than a year before moving to Columbia, Missouri so that my father could accept a teaching position at the University of Missouri. After another six years and a new baby brother, my family moved back to Illinois where we stayed until 2021 when, prompted by the Pandemic, we moved back to Mountain Ranch to live on my grandparent’s spacious property away from the locked down city.
It was when we moved to Calaveras County that I began attending Libertas Academy, a school to which I owe so much of academic, physical, and, most importantly, spiritual significance. Up to this point, I had attended a different school every year from Kindergarten to seventh grade, which had instilled in me an ability to adapt quickly and also a tendency to think of myself as the outsider. At Libertas Academy I was taught valuable lessons in Theology, Rhetoric, and Logic in addition to my Math, Science, and English classes. The physical education program at Libertas Academy ensured that I stayed in above average physical shape for the entirety of my career there, and the numerous public speaking assignments forced me to grow as a Rhetor. Needless to say, I attribute much of what I am today to the excellent education I received at Libertas Academy.
The most important thing that I learned at Libertas Academy was a fear of the Lord. I had been attending church most of my life, but the full immersion into serious Christian culture was extremely helpful for me as a teenager because it gave my still pliable selfhood and my outsider mentality something to latch onto and identify with. The primary purpose of my life can be summed up with the Westminster Shorter Catechism and its answer to the question of Man’s chief end: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” And such is mine. Though my chief end can be distilled into this convenient one-liner, the nuances of how it actually manifests into a whole life is the part that I am still striving to discover and live out. I have a strong belief in the sovereignty of God and his orchestrating of human lives for his ultimate good purpose. This, and the doctrine of Salvation through grace alone, as can be found in Romans, are the basis for my defence against the modern desire to build oneself up at all costs and to glorify the act of rebellion itself as some kind of Good. I still struggle with the teenage tendencies to be self-centered, rebellious for its own sake, and mercurial, but these truths that underscore my belief system and consequently life have helped tremendously in giving me peace.
Another thing that I feel strongly about in regards to my philosophy and worldview is the good-faith pursuit of Truth. One of, if not the most fundamental aspects of my personality, even before Christianity had become integral to it, is my desire for uncompromised Truth and a radical honesty with oneself and others. This requires a prioritization of objective reality over emotional, social, or self-serving influences and tendencies. I would rather ask questions and listen in order to learn and discover the truth than talk if I have nothing of substance to say. This idea of a loyalty to the Truth, which I believe at the highest level to be God himself, is at the very core of who I am.
While In Highschool I have engaged in a variety of extracurriculars and hobbies. My favorite and most persistent of these include Piano lessons and Karate, specifically Sho-Shu, training. While I am not exemplary at any one hobby, I enjoy trying to be a well rounded person who has been exposed to many activities and hobby communities. By far the most persistent interest of mine over practically my whole life has been computers. I’ve been collecting, disassembling, and refurbishing electronic devices for many years, and recently, last summer, built my first custom pc. I have been volunteering in church tech departments doing anything from advancing slideshows, to running livestreams, to engineering audio, all out of an appreciation and fascination with technology infrastructure and efficient systems. I have also been studying web development over the summer for several years which has helped me think more programmatically and understand the software side of computers much better. I also recently put my knowledge of programming as well as my interest in psychology into practice with a Science fair project which involved testing various CSS properties of digital buttons for how attractive they made a digital button to press. My project won first place in the Libertas Academy Annual Science Fair in 2025.
My time at the Calaveras County Water District was also an opportunity for me to indulge my passion for computers. During the summer of 2025, I applied for and was chosen to participate in the Calaveras County Water District's Summer Work Program, where I primarily helped out with some menial labour at the central office but also took every opportunity to help and learn from the IT guys who taught me about the world of information technology and imparted some practical skills as well. This experience was truly a life-changing one because it gave me a glimpse of the professional world which I will inevitably rejoin someday.
Because of my passion for consumer electronics, my interest in psychology, and my aforementioned desire to pursue truth over corporate greed, I see myself entering the consumer electronics space and attempting to change it in the direction of healthy, consumer-oriented practices. Whether that be on the front of right-to-repair, data privacy, or less manipulative interfaces, I want to help the consumer electronics industry stop blindly barreling forward towards profits and new technology and begin to ask whether a given technology or implementation is actually healthy and useful to the consumer. My ideal way of doing this is by means of some kind of entrepreneurial venture, which is exciting for me because I find business infrastructure fascinating. In order to pursue this goal, I will first need a deeper understanding of the actual technology involved in a consumer electronic device and the best way to do that is by getting a bachelor's degree in computer engineering. Computer Engineering is a combination of computer science and electric engineering and will allow me to develop a full picture understanding of the computer from both the software and hardware perspectives. Any help that I could receive in funding this first step would be greatly appreciated, thank you for your time.