Personal experiences, responsibilities, and challenges shaping academic and career choices

Philosophy

I am the eldest of three children and my father left our family when I was 12-years-old and my younger sisters were four and three years of age. My mother is a teacher of mentally-challenged children and so her work -- though rewarding -- was often very taxing on her emotionally. Between working full-time as a teacher and being a newly-single parent, she needed all the help she could get at home. I became another kind of parent to my two younger sisters. Once they were both in school, I was the one who went with my mother to parent-teacher conferences. I watched their school plays and helped them with their homework, and when I was old enough to drive, I drove them to ballet class and picked them up from sleepovers with their friends. I had become, in a sense, a father figure for them. They sometimes called me "daddy" and then realized they had made the mistake, though I never corrected them. It was simply that I had become that kind of figure in their eyes.

While my sisters did very well in school, my grades slipped shortly after my father had left. I had always done extremely well in school, but the new responsibilities that I had to undertake, as well as the emotional crisis I, myself, was going through, too its toll on me. I wanted everything for my younger sisters. I was bound and determined, even at twelve and later as a teenager, to make sure that they never lacked anything when it came to attention and help in everything that they needed.

I was called in to talk to a counselor a few months after my father had left and this counselor was very helpful and understanding what I was going through. I was able to express how I felt to her and it helped me to have an outlet for that because, though I was still a child, I didn't want to burden my mother as I knew she was going through her own emotional rollercoaster.

I feel that this period in my life helped me became a responsible human being. I was able to become a person at a very young age who could juggle homework, help my sisters with their homework, and help to take care of a household. I feel that though it was a difficult time, I owe that time in my life to being prepared for the responsibility of achieving some of my educational goals. I learned that I am quite apt at juggling numerous responsibilities at once and though there was a period in my life where my grades slipped a bit, it did not last. I was able to deal with the emotions associated with my father leaving and move on. My grades throughout junior high and high school were very good and I am proud that I was able to overcome such a difficult thing for a child.

I am interested in business management and I believe that I will be successful in the field because of my ability to juggle responsibilities and inspire others. My sisters maintain to this day that without my being able to stay so strong in the face of adversity, they would not be who they are today. I like to think that my ability to focus and make their success as important as my own has prepared me for managing and inspiring others. When I was young, I never felt like I was alone, even after our father left. I always felt like I was a part of a greater good, a greater family. My mother instilled this way of thinking in me and I believe that we were all able to overcome strife by holding onto each other and never forgetting that we were all in the same boat together.

As a business manager, I believe that inspiring people, listening to people, showing them and making them feel that they count are some of the most important aspects of running a great business. I feel that I am a good communicator and that I am good at understanding the differences in how each distinct person communicates. I am also able to change the way I communicate with people in order to reach them on their respective levels.

Throughout my high school and college career I was involved in different extracurricular activities. I played basketball throughout high school and I feel that the sport instilled within me some very important values pertaining to teamwork, diversity, and competition. I feel that I have a very healthy idea of what it means to be competitive and I owe this to the game of basketball. Not only does basketball require physical strength and endurance, it also requires that strength of character and a knowledge of the importance of community. I was captain of the basketball team my senior year in high school and I believe that I was chosen because of my healthy sense of teamwork, community, diversity, and my ability to communicate and inspire my other teammates.