Prompt: Your personal statement: Explain why you are applying to the program and describe the personal, intellectual and interpersonal qualities that make you well placed to be a future leader in your home country.
I find everything in life designed as a movie structure. Beginning, experiencing, ending, then starting all over again. It's the cycle of life. Beginnings are always magic, it's an opportunity to rebirth, and I believe that each new beginning has to be stronger than the previous one; otherwise you won't accomplish something significant. However, sometimes you get stuck in this cycle and feel lost. Unfortunately, I'm at this stage at the moment.
Four years ago, I made the hardest decisions in my life. I forgot about what I am expected to do to do what I really want to do. I quit the job that was securing my living and decided to start working to have a career that satisfies my ambitions and goals in life. Changing career has been always challenging, however, the magic lightened my new beginning when I was selected in the International Ford Fellowship program to study filmmaking in a graduate level in the US.
During my studying years, I took the challenge in every single day of them trying to make the most of intensive learning. Regardless of restlessness, exhaustion, sleeplessness, sometimes panic and even more boredom, everything paid off in the end by receiving my MFA in Film.
Coming back from the US to my home country with high hopes and a great lifetime experience conflicted with a lot of struggling to enter the cinema industry, because it's very closed community that depends only on connections from the insiders. Afterwards, I was offered an opportunity to take role in founding a pan-region digital media platform. This opportunity helped me to start the new beginning stronger than the previous one. Applying and paying forward what I've learned was the passion of this cycle. I worked in this project as if it's mine. It was rare to get chances like this in life, taking a role in building a big enterprise from scratch and get all the financial and technical support to apply your vision. However, this time the ending was too soon. After almost a year and due to some circumstances, the project headed to another direction and I decided to start all over again, so, I quit.
I thought this was the closure of this cycle, however, thinking a lot about what I just left and how much effort I invested in it, make me feel that I'm stuck. However, I believe that I found out the silver lining as I came up to a conclusion from this experience that entrepreneurship is the key. For that, I'm applying for this scholarship, to renew myself, and further my study by learning new skills that would help me as an entrepreneur to continue the journey I started four years ago.
Mohamed, while your essay tells me most of the basic information that you can be expected to present, you did not provide any information as to why and how you can be considered to be a future leader in your home country. What the essay wants to be assured of is that you plan on returning to your home country after you graduate from your course. That said, the essay will greatly benefit from examples of your leadership skills from your home country work experience. That is what you should be presenting instead of telling the admissions officer that you wuit your job and took a chance. A responsible and effective leader will never take a chance on the future of anybody. He most certainly will not risk his family's future to pursue his own ambitions. So you need to rethink the essay. Revise it in such a manner that you will only present your leadership abilities and your plans for becoming a future leader in your home country. Make leadership plans and discuss those in this essay.
Thanks a lot for your advice, Louisa. I think you are correct. I didn't include such plan as a future leader because there is another essay they are requesting about this specific subject. however, I really think that I should rethink my essay again. Thanks.
