Undergraduate / UC PROMPT; My father has played a tremendous part - me as an civil engineer [3]

Describe the world you come from - for example, your family, community or school - and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations.

One's dreams and aspirations are formed by thousands of arbitrary events; no matter how insignificant they might be. My father has played a tremendous part in shaping my dream of becoming a civil engineer.

"Have you decided what are you going to do?"
"Huh"
"When I was your age..."
These phrases were the beginning of a long conversation I had with my father, which ultimately shaped my dreams.
My father's story begins with the tragic 1976 Tang Shan earthquake. He was one of the few who had escaped the Tang Shan Hotel when it had collapsed. The building was designed to resist a quake of magnitude 8, but the fund for a proper construction went to the pockets of the greedy contractors and building inspectors. As a result, in a matter of seconds the earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale, destroyed over 90 per cent of the city's buildings and left 248,000 people dead and dying. Three years later my father went to college majoring in civil engineering, he had a noble dream to help stop such tragic, but reality proved it is impossible to achieve such dream in the corrupted Chinese system. He left China in 1996, seeking success in America, after many years of hard work as a construction worker; he opened his own General Contracting Company but its still much less than what he envisioned. Although my father has always taught me to do what I truly like, to get involve with my own interests and never held me back from pursuing my ambitions, but I know that he wanted me accomplish his dream.

Ever since, the time I spent with my father were largely devoted to construction jobsites. At first, I hated the sites, the smell of fresh cement, the sounds of nail guns, everything about the site made me uneasy. Slowly, the empty landscape turned into the home of a family, such transition was amazing to me. I became interested when my dad talked construction related topics, from the foundations of a large shopping mall to the number of nails needed to connect the wooden frames of a small house. One night, my father brought home a large role of blueprints, the enigmatic drawings fascinated me, but when my father begin to talk about the details, I felt startled since I didn't even have a basic understanding to the concepts. I read books on Physics and Mathematics purely to understand the complexity of the prints, when I was finally able to apply what I learned to the prints it was truly amazing in my eyes. From that point on, I knew that civil engineering is my dream.

My father has significantly influenced me to become who I am today. I might not possess such a noble dream as my father does, but it is that dream that contributed to my interests and developed it into my own goal of becoming a civil engineer, which I hold with high regards today.

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Undergraduate / "Perseverance and failure can not coexist." - UC PROMPT 2 [NEW]

Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud, and how does it relate to the person you are?"

Perseverance and failure can not coexist. Failure only happens when one decides to stop trying and quit. The personal quality that I hold with high regard is that I see challenges as opportunities and I have the perseverance to accomplish my goals. I will try my hardest to accomplish what I truly desire in spite of counterinfluences, opposition, or discouragement.

I have hated challenges for the most part of my life, but as I grew older and wiser, I found that challenges are opportunities, for me to grow and learn, to strengthen myself. I now understand the old saying "nothing worthwhile comes easy" when I work hard for something and see it manifest before my eyes, I get a powerful sense of pride and accomplishment. I now see that challenges are blessings to test how badly I wanted to accomplish my goals, and how hard I am willing to work for them.

During my freshmen year, I came across a wonderful piece of instrument, the guitar. I was captivated when silence changed to music at the flick of my fingers. Before I know it, I spent hours online for guitar related videos; I had ignited a passion for the guitar. When I first started to play, my fingers were the first to give in, the strings left deep marks that stained for days, and the disjointed notes I called "music" was simply unbearable. It seemed to be hopeless, the challenges seem to be overwhelming, I wanted to take the easy way out, just admit defeat and quit, but I did not let defeat get the best out of me, I asked myself, will you get flustered, or will you get determined? Will you cry, or will you roll up your sleeves and get to work? My strong preserve nature rose up and I developed a steely determination to not be beaten. After months of hard work and countless hours practicing, I learned my first song, when I picked the last note in the melody, the tone sounded so sweet, or maybe it was just the satisfaction of my hard work paying off. After two years of continuous practice, I felt so confident that I enrolled in the Annual Chinese Cultural Festival representing my music school. From this valuable experience, not only I have became a skilled guitar player, I have once again learned the importance of perseverance

I find the biggest challenge is having positive attitude towards obstacles. While some people take a victim mentality when obstacles arise, I look at them as blessing of opportunities make myself stronger. I challenge myself to figure out a solution, to find a path, no matter how difficult it might seem. In fact, whenever I feel like giving up I pretend there is a great critic up in the sky who laughs mockingly at me, with a face that says "you can never do that." I simply look back with a wicked grin, roll up my sleeves and say, and "Just watch me!"

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