Undergraduate / My parents have owned a donut shop for almost twenty-five years; Common App [2]

My parents have owned a donut shop for almost twenty-five years. I am blessed with amazing parents and the opportunity to eat free donuts whenever I pleaseïa fact my friends were always jealous of. However, my parents have shown me that the donut business is not necessarily the sweetest labor. All my life, I have watched my parents wake up at three in the morning every day to open up shop, work fifteen-hour shifts, come home to cook dinner for the family, and then go back to the shop to check on the bakers.

I have witnessed how exhausting running a business can be, but I have also observed, through my parents, the satisfaction that lies in sustaining a business through one's own innovation and perseverance.

I have personally experienced a taste of my parent's sense of accomplishment in my own efforts while working at the donut shop. For the last six years, I have worked the Sunday shift at the shop to give my mom a day once a week. At the end of a grueling work day, I have found nothing more satisfying than seeing empty donut trays behind the counter, 100 dozen donuts sold, my hard work happily manifested in those empty trays.

Furthermore, I find pride in watching customers regularly buy our donuts out of fondness and trust for our goods. Being able to provide customers with their much-needed morning coffee or afternoon snack gives me a sense of joy and importance when I see how grateful they are for our services.

I aspire to follow in my parent's footsteps and start my own business in the future. I am attracted to the idea of autonomy and independence that lies in succeeding in my own business. At the same time, I dream of offering consumers something that will improve their way of life or increase their happinessïmuch like how I have frequently seen my parent's donuts brighten someone's day.

I often hear that starting a business mostly involves luck. My parents have proven to me otherwise. They have worked hard for what they have accomplished, never settling for mediocrity, always pushing to expand their business to its highest potentialïand I know the reason they work hard is so that they can provide my sisters and I with opportunities they never received, like the chance to go to college. I am indebted to my parents for all the sacrifices they have made for me, but I am also indebted to them for demonstrating what perseverance can amount to and the value of hard work. Through my parents, I know what a true businesswoman looks like, and I strive to live up to their examples.

Undergraduate / UC Essay #2: Why I am proud of my managerial position in FIRST Robotics [2]

Is this essay good enough? Prompt: Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution, or experience that is important to you.

Sometimes I pretend my F.I.R.S.T. Robotics team is a neat little manufacturing corporation-and I am the operations manager. The F.I.R.S.T program sponsors teams across the nation to design and build original competition robots in the span of six weeks time. Because there are so many different aspects to building a competitive robot, I have always viewed my F.I.R.S.T. team as a company, rather than merely a robotics team. Our company is composed of diverse, complex sub-teams, ranging from public relations, to logistics, to programming-all of which are vital to the sustenance of the corporation. Armed with vigilance and Microsoft Excel, my job is to make sure all parts of the team operate smoothly in a cooperative manner.

As team manager, I plan and write task lists, delegate jobs to team leaders, and oversee productivity levels. In addition, I am the liaison between every person involved with our team: team members, team leaders, mentors, sponsors, and school administrators. I make sure the lines of communication are open from every side, so that everyone is giving and receiving crucial information needed to carry out various tasks and functions.

Like all team efforts, we have experienced bumps in the road. For example, there was the time our sponsor quit unexpectantly, or the year the school threatened to shut the team down, or the crisis we faced when we fell $10,000 in debt. In overcoming obstacles such as these, I have learned that my unofficial role as team manager is to keep morale alive. I have realized my attitude as a leader dictates how my team reacts to various challenges and roadblocks. Thus, my best tools are a good attitude and optimism, for if I lose hope or slack off, my team members are prone to do the same.

I am not an engineer. My contribution to my team lies in my management abilities and organizational skills; my source of pride as team manager lies in watching how my planning and motivation enables the manufacturing of a beautiful end product: the robot. In this, I have also discovered a pride in myself that lies in my willingness to contribute to something bigger than me, something worthwhile, something I am passionate about, even though I may lack necessary skills to contribute in other areas-but I give what I have. In addition, I find my knack for planning and organizing so intrinsic to who I am that I find great enjoyment in such managerial positions.

As much as I may fantasize that my team is a "top-notch corporation producing the sophisticated robots of tomorrow," I know that my F.I.R.S.T. experience was not really a true corporate experience. I am sure there are many pressures in corporations out in the real world that I am not aware of or have not yet encountered. No doubt I have numerous lessons left to learn about management and leadership. Nevertheless, I like to tell people that my F.I.R.S.T. team is my little high school business, and I am proud to have been a part of it.