NTU Scholarship - Subject of Personal Importance: Curiosity

investigating the unknown

Since the dawn of mankind, all humans have had the intrinsic quality of investigating the unknown. The importance of being curious can be seen throughout history whether it was for our initial survival, age of exploration or the golden age of science as it is now. Therefore, it is this curiosity that I cherish after all it is has been my formula for success in my years till now.

Although history tells the story of the man and his curiosity my tale is different. Being born in a country whose education system emphasized rote learning, made my learning experience dull. It left me with no way to satisfying my excessive curiosity, however, everything changed when I moved abroad and started following a different scheme of studies, one that focused on testing student understanding. Given the free rein, I started asking questions about almost all the subjects and learning wasn't an uninteresting process anymore. Moreover, my interest in a variety of topics made it so that I was always involved in a discussion. Unknowingly I became much more capable of communicating my ideas and thoughts meanwhile developing a habit of self-learning. This became a huge plus for me because moving forward I became invested in computer-related technology. My spirit of inquiry always helped me keep up-to-date with the newest generation of computer parts, programs and researches even pushing me to make an attempt at learning a new programming language. This became a valuable experience for me, one that would help me choose my track for the future.

Throughout my stages in life especially as a teenager, I had always been propelled forward by my curiosity. It was responsible for my success in learning, communicating and even shaping my future. Therefore, it is priceless to me.

The essay is limited to 300 words. Any feedback or criticism no matter how harsh is accepted. :^) Thank you for your time reading this.
Specifically, focus on whether my essay structure is good and on my relevance to the topic.

The first paragraph is over reaching. It doesn't really help establish the reason why curiosity is of personal importance to you. That paragraph more defines curiosity in general terms There needs to be a personal definition of curiosity or, better yet, a reason for its personal importance not depicted in general references. That paragraph does not work very well as an opening hook.

You should open instead with how the limitations of your upbringing developed your curiosity, which is why it became important to you. From there, explain how curiosity helped you develop a sense of maturity that your educational system could not provide. How it helped you not only become inquisitive, but observant of your surroundings so that you could develop solutions to problems or something of the sort.

The last paragraph is more of telling rather than showing. It would be best to further develop that into a personal reference, or definition of curiosity and why people take it for granted in their lives.

Thank you very much! I feel like with these guidelines I can make my essay make more sense and flow much more smoothly