Undergraduate / My Common App essay- written by my "Grandson" [4]

Ivan Borisovich Tcherevik 11/27/2069
Before the kind person reading this holographic image decides to virtually incinerate my essay, please understand that I do realize the Common Application essay topic for the fall of 2070 asks me to "Describe the influence of downloadable children on the overpopulation of the planet", but despite that fact, I decided to write about my grandfather Max. This was once a large fad in application essays at the turn of the century, but I decided to bring it back, primarily because my grandfather had the biggest influence on me in my adolescent years and I owe him everything I am worth.

Everything I know about my grandfather's youth was told to me by my mother during bedtime stories; I would curl up under my blankets and feast on tales of adventure, excitement and illumination. He was born "Maxim Dmitrievich Tcherevik" during the harsh Moscow winter of 1992; unfortunately back then humans were born without the bar code that both you and I have on the back of our necks, so his exact birth weight, skin tone at birth and skeletal density is unknown. His family then moved to the United States of America, where Max attended American public school for the next decade, until he finally matriculated to college where he would base the foundation to the incredible fifty years ahead of him. According to the various sources left behind by my grandfather, primarily through entries left in his "journal"; attending college in a large city helped him realize his true potential as both a person and a budding professional. As a young boy I would always rummage through the cardboard boxes my grandfather left behind in the attic, fascinated by the college artifacts I stumbled upon. Whether it was the dorm wide chess tournament 1st prize trophy, meticulously put together study sheets for a Macroeconomics final or the bright purple intramural tennis jersey that had "Russian Rocket" emblazoned on the back; I was always left with a tenacious thirst to discover college life on my own.

Unfortunately, in 2014 the world was propelled into a frenetic state of chaos and conflict, a period most of us have come to know as World War III. While the majority of my grandfather's classmates were getting their heads shaved and M16s forced into their arms, Max was fighting his own battle, instead of defending the savings accounts of corrupt oil billionaires. He fled the country in a self-made flotation device, allowing the rough Atlantic waves to carry him towards the gold coast of Africa. My grandfather never left a single written record from this period in his life and refused to speak about it to us, therefore, all that we could recover from this point of his life came from the random African villagers that spoke at his funeral. They offered to us a wide range of possible scenarios and theories. One was that he developed a cure for AIDS in the bed of a pick up truck somewhere in Kenya, using just a simple chemistry kit. Another was that he jump-started a people's revolution in Libya, liberating the country from over 50 years of dictatorial rule. It is even believed that he spurred the agriculture industry across the continent by championing a microloans program that enabled African farmers to compete against cheap imported foods.

It was only 10 years later when my grandfather finally returned to the United States to pursue his professional interests. The country was economically devastated after the war, but where others viewed it as a completely helpless situation, Max saw an unsurpassable business opportunity. Less and less American students were now studying computer science and software engineering, as the Software industry had shifted primarily into the former Soviet republics, China and India. Therefore, Max utilized the cheaper American labor to launch "Mighty Cloud Ventures". What started out as a small-time effort in my grandfather's garage, with only 5 part time workers, slowly transformed into a software empire. Mobile phones, laptop computers, corporate desktops all over the globe were running software applications developed by Mighty Cloud. The only place Max can attribute this giant success is college, where he acquired a passion for software engineering, coupled with an acute sense of business management and industry.

It was repeated to me at several steps of this process for my application to be a shadow of my personality and values, which leads you to ask yourself, why would I be writing about my grandfather? That's because when I hear these stories of perseverance, innovation and success from my grandfather's life it's almost as if I am looking into a crystal ball of my very own future.