Undergraduate /
Not everyone in life deserves a second chance, georgetown personal statement [4]
I have already sent these essays in to Georgetown, however, i was hoping to receive unbiassed critic from someone besides my family. Thanks!
Essay One
ALL APPLICANTS : The Admissions Committee would like to know more about you in your own words. Please submit a brief essay,
either personal or creative, which you feel best describes you.
Not everyone in life gets a second chance, and quite frankly fewer deserve one. I at times had found it easy to ask myself as to why I deserved the chance I received so many years ago, and with time the answer became ever so prevalent.
Growing up I learned there is never just one acceptable answer to any given issue, as my mom had always said, "there is always room for negotiation". I took this idea to heart, not only implementing this concept of negotiation into my home life, but also expanded this art to all aspects of my life. Going through school, a various array of jobs, and countless relationships, I realized that through skillful communication there were always ways to get what I wanted.
Being an adolescent teenager with an overwhelming ego, I mistakenly perceived my successful negotiation tactics as the ability to do anything I wanted. Needless to say I fell in between a rock and a hard place, landing myself into a seemingly hopeless and desperate state of mind, drug addiction.
June 22, 2008 I, with the help of my family, made the humbling life changing decision to enter a long-term recovery house to get sober. My second chance had just begun. Living in an environment that stressed the importance of selflessness, accountability, and honesty, I stopped dying and began participating in life.
Today my life is full. I am using my past experiences and applying the resourceful tactics that come along with the territory of drug addiction to other areas of life. Initially when I got sober I needed to find work to support my current living situation, and in time my education. Being an extraverted personable individual, I applied for a sales position at Nordstrom during the peak of the recession and received the opportunity. With finding a retail sales job in Women's Shoes, I found that I was supporting myself, not through selling merchandise, but providing a service based on feelings and emotions. This experience in turn helped me learn how to understand the needs of a diverse group of people within seconds in order to deliver a product that suited their needs.
Eventually adding school to my plate I learned how to manage my time, energy, and priorities while still maintaining my grades and at the same time winning top sales awards and customer service awards at Nordstrom. Being a self-supporting, full time student is stimulating, but having a full plate while remaining an active member in Alcoholics Anonymous it then becomes enlightening. I often like to pride myself on the ability to work under pressure, and in fact, work better under it. Having learned that two hours between work and school become ever so valuable, I have had the opportunity to appreciate the value of time and not waste a single minute. This practice and value for time will certainly need to be implemented March 12, as I begin my position as the Audit Intern for the City of Torrance, California Finance Department.
Being an admirable employee, successful student, or respectable son aren't the reasons as to why I received this second chance. Plain and simple, having the opportunity to help others receive the same chance I did more than three and a half years ago is the only plausible reason for me being alive today. Having a strong foundation in recovery, implementing good moral principals in my daily life, and learning from a near death experience, I feel that with a well-rounded education I will be able to not only be able inspire others, but I will be able to tackle any further obstacle life throws at me.
APPLICANTS TO THE MCDONOUGH SCHOOL OF BUSINESS : Briefly describe the factors that have influenced your interest in
studying business.
I love money, every last dollar. Seemingly shallow, allow me to explain.
Growing up in a household ran by successful Iranian immigrants, I quickly learned that hard work, dedication, ambition, and motivation were the initial keys to financial success. Whether it was trying to be the top seller during any of my parents' garage sales, or making deals in my second grade classroom selling key chains, my parents "keys to success" transpired to me as an early child and I adopted these principles attempting to implement them immediately. Always provided for, but never being given what I wanted, I learned at an early age that if I wanted something I had to get it myself. Wanting a job but lacking a work permit, at the age of fourteen I decided to begin networking in my middle school's quad during lunch time and quickly found a dishwashing position at a local restaurant. I continued working throughout high school in various settings such as a French restaurant, a prestigious sports club, and even a mortgage company, learning about different people, while acquiring new skills. I began to realize that I had a gift in connecting with people from different backgrounds and of all ages. Along with the personal capital I gained, I began to acquire a huge amount of financial capital as well, and by the time I reached my sixteenth birthday I had saved roughly $10,000. An admirable savings account for a young teenager teased by the trendy pleasures of high school peer pressure and whose maturity level still inadequately proficient enough to understand the complexity of impulse.
You see, what I learned at such a young age was that, to me, money didn't stand as a simple bartering tool or a status symbol, a means to stand tall in any social class or even indulge in the gluttony of popular trends, what I grasped was the idea that money in some way stands as a personal marker of growth; the ability to stay focused, determined, and motivated.
Trickling into so many areas of my life, I found staying focused on financial success kept me motivated while supporting myself throughout college, and the determination to invest in my future kept me disciplined. I found myself constantly striving for more, knowing that with any hand I'm dealt in life, I have the ability to control its outcome. In life's journey it is not money as an end to itself but the sense of accomplishment, a measure of the benefit one has created. By learning from each of my business transactions, whether as a top sales person for a large corporation such as Nordstrom, or as a resourceful entrepreneur in second grade, I continue to strive to develop my expertise in the financial arena by capitalizing on my endless drive for success, and my ultimate aspiration for personal growth, every last dollar of it.