Undergraduate /
'MISSION ACCOMPLISHED' - SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCE AND IMPACT ON YOU [6]
Prompt: Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you. 250-500 wordsI have focused on the "experience" part of the prompt. Every word in this essay is true, and it also one of my UC essays. The essay has 484 words, including the title. Please tell me how to work on improving the essay! Thank you :)MISSION ACCOMPLISHEDThe day I was honored the post of the School Counselor- a position the School Government that is loaded with intense responsibility- I actually realized how much my life had changed, and how much I had changed as a person. My epaulettes inspired me to shoulder my responsibilities with tact and grace as well as respect for my colleagues in the Captain Body, along with the students of Delhi Public School. The day the Investiture Ceremony was held, I truly understood the depth in the famous Spiderman catchphrase, "With great power comes great responsibility."
My school is a rather good representative of India's population- it promises education to over 3000 students, from Nursery to 12th grade. With over 250 students in one batch, and the only student School Counselor, my post has been a full-time job. It often required missing classes (and getting ticked off for missing classes), but it was so emotionally fulfilling that although people suggested resigning, I never quit. This was something I loved doing- solving problems. When a 6th grader would come to me for something like "she hit me!" or when a 12th grader would come to me to ask for, say, drug-quitting advice, I knew that the time I was going to give the person in front of me was going to be time well utilized. There are a lot of issues that students cannot take to parents or teachers, and I understood that even before I took up the post. There have been instances where I made slip-ups, judged people from what they told me, even behaved unprofessionally, but I never refused to help. Which is what, I've been told, made people think of me as approachable and trustworthy, an opinion that I take as a gigantic compliment.
Being the School Counselor had often been misjudged as being a "spy" for the teachers. I am proud to say that I broke that assumption, to such an extent that even a few teachers came to me for counseling. There was a time when a teacher told me that he was having marital problems, which were affecting his temper and teaching, because of which he was on probation. That was one of the most satisfying experiences I have had, because, after talking to him and pushing him during the course of several sessions, he managed to sew his personal life together and detach it from his professional front.
I learnt a lot about human behavior and child psychology from this position. It gave me a bird's eye view of what a person faces inside and outside of school, and a worm's eye view of what the "big bad world" could be like. I learnt perception, sensitivity, initiative, involvement, leadership and management at close quarters, and I know that even after several years, I would remember a fellow student's shining eyes after the "mission accomplished" with a smile.
