self-presentation
My name is Nguyen Thi Hue An. I was born on July 21st, 2003 in Nam Dinh, a small but peaceful city in the north of Vietnam. It is a beautiful place near the sea, with a lake at the center of the city, and its hospitable and friendly people. I spent a very happy childhood there and I always feel so lucky about that. Currently, I am a senior year student at Le Hong Phong gifted High School in Nam Dinh city. I will have graduated from my highschool by June 2021 and intend to enter university in September 2021. My career goal is to be able to work in a Marketing management position.
There is a saying that I have borne in my mind since my 8th grade: "We are all stories at the end, so make it a good one". To be honest, I spent a few years trying to find a more well-placed quote for myself, but even when I have come across several truly inspiring ones, until this moment, I still find my life somehow just simply similar to the saying. And since that moment, I have started to believe that every person in this world is writing their own story every day. We are at the same time both the author and the main character in our stories. Every choice I have made, everything I have done including all of my faults and my mistakes makes me who I am today. So, now I want to let you in the story of my life.
To begin with, I want my family including my parents, my older sister and my younger brother to be mentioned first since I believe it plays an important role in my personal development. My mother, who I am always proud of, has been working in the educational department for more than 30 years now. She has been one of my biggest motivations ever since I was just a little girl. One thing that I am forever grateful for must be that my mother never ceases to support me to achieve and chase after my own dreams without being judgemental. With her philosophy of education, she has encouraged me to seek for the meaning of learning as well as the enjoyment in acquiring knowledge. Since then, I have come to realise that though the process of gaining knowledge may be rough or difficult, and may take a lifetime, I am ready for it. My mother may be the one who instilled desire for learning into me but it is my older sister that fuels that fire inside me. She was always one of the top students during her school years, and last year when she finished her master degree in the UK, majoring in Marketing, I was greatly inspired to further my education specialising in Marketing. Moreover, not only just my nuclear family but my extended family, including my aunts, my uncles and my grandparents have always wanted me to go to see the world, to discover and experience the diversity of culture around the world and totally support me with all of my decisions. Thus, it is apparent that my whole family is the biggest driving force for me to be who I am today.
Thanks to my family and our long-lasting tradition of graduating from top schools in the region, I am lucky enough to be educated in top-tier institutions. I graduated from Pham Hong Thai Primary school and then Tran Dang Ninh Secondary School, and am expected to finish my highschool education at Le Hong Phong Highschool for gifted students by 2021. I have been specialising in English for the past 7 years of my school year. At my primary school, I took part in a national English speaking contest and successfully won the third prize. I think that was the foundation of my love and interest in English and 5 years later, I entered my secondary school majoring in English. Throughout 4 years at secondary school, my hard work was recognized and I was awarded two major prizes including the third prize in a English speaking contest and came in second at the regional English contest for gifted students. I was awarded "Certificate of achievement for outstanding academic performance" successively in 11 years. However, what I am more proud of is that I have always been highly active in every social activity during my school years. I was in charge of leading and directing my class whenever my school holds any projects or contests. In the summer of 2016, I became a camper at GPA Road to Rio 2016 in Hanoi. At the camp, we were all divided into different countries attending a mock Olympics. I was in the Kenya team and although we struggled a lot to go through each challenge at first but time to time, we learned how to cooperate with each other and headed for victory eventually. The most important thing I realized during that time was that despite our different personalities, background or even ages, to be able to work in a team, we need to put all of those differences aside and set our mind on the same goal. After three years, when I entered highschool, I had the opportunity to be the head of content at Le Hong Phong Model United Nations. In this position, I have been exposed to a more professional environment. My job is to keep up with all of the hotly debated issues and problems which are happening around the world and come up with new content for the team. At the same time, I had to make sure that each of my teammates knows exactly what they need to do and to follow the flow of work. At first, no one in my team was able to finish their tasks well and I had to guide them to go through a single step at a time. That was an exhausting process and I was under a lot of pressure. But after a few weeks, everything did turn out better and everyone managed to complete their work. In January 2019, the department of English in my school hosted a gala, "City of stars". With my previous experience in social activities and event planning, I was given the chance to be one of the organizers of the gala. Me and my friends worked very hard on the script for the play on the gala night. It is still fresh in my memory that we had to struggle a lot to balance our school work and catching up with the scheme of the gala. We definitely had quite a fight at that time regarding the plot and the ending, but fortunately, we did come to terms with each other and agreed on what is the best for the gala. There were times that I was on the verge of quitting because the job was extremely stressful and demanding, we did need to listen to everyone's opinions and at the same time made major decisions. After all, I am glad that I did not give it all up, I was able to be there at the very end and saw all of my hard work and great effort turning into success. What I gained from that amazing experience was that it is of utmost importance to inspire and persuade people to do their job even when they have never done it before. One more thing that I am really proud of is that I was able to keep the team in high spirits and cheer them up even when things did not seem to go on well at all.
The last three years at high school, I can see the most noticeable changes about myself. To be able to enter the best high school in the city, I had to pass a very difficult exam but I did it with high flying color. In the same year, I went through the toughest time in my life. My mother got promoted at that time and my family had a difficult time trying to balance everything in our life. There was a thick wall between me and my mother. I could not have a heart-to-heart conversation with her anymore and I felt like I just lost the most important part of my life. But life is unpredictable, and in each loss, there is always a gain and I was lucky enough to find a priceless puzzle in my life, BTS, the 7 guys that have changed my life incredibly ever since I found them. Right at the time when I was on the verge of giving up on my life, it was a miracle for me to find those 7 guys and to let them be a part of my life. Everything about them ranging from their music, performances to messages has become the source of motivation for me to keep moving and trying to better myself every single day. The thing that makes them stand out and have a significant impact on my development is their educational values. Their music and content often cover different fields of life such as philosophy, literature, psychology and fine art and the desire to understand what they imply in their lyrics makes me feel a great urge to dig into such fields, which I never think will draw so much of my attention. And on my journey with them, I found my one sanctuary. Watching BTS talking openly about social issues in our society today, as well as trying to deliver their positive and meaningful messages of loving ourselves, of breaking the social norms or keeping the hope to their fans all round the world, I realized that is the thing that I want to do. BTS is spreading positivity and making people happy through their music and I want to do it by telling stories. I have been observing the way Big Hit Entertainment, BTS's label, coming up with excellent campaigns or projects, trying to make BTS's music be heard and they are doing it by telling stories of those 7 boys. What they want to contribute to the world, how they want to change the world for the better with their music has become the biggest driving force to me, and have a remarkable influence on my choice of career. To me, at its very core, marketing is about making customers satisfied. And with every product, the manufacturers are trying to tell their stories and I want to help them deliver that to people. I have been learning and reading articles about Big Hit Entertainment and their promotion strategy for BTS for the last three years and I have learned a lot of things. But the most important one is that they do it by amazing communication with ARMY, the fanbase of BTS. Building a persona for target customers is key when developing a product and targeting ads. For lifestyle brands like BTS, this persona becomes the core of everything. BTS has done a great job learning about what matters to their fans and adapting as they both grow. BTS has been actively involved in social issues and they have had two speeches at the UN General Assembly in 2018 and 2020 regarding young generations, which marked as momentous milestones in their career since it does not aim at only one particular group of fans but everyone from all walks of life with different cultural background, ethnicities and gender identities. For more than 3 years, watching their ecosystem growing, I have decided that this is what I want to pursue in the future as my life-long career.
However, that is not the only reason I want to study Marketing. In my viewpoint, marketing is a field for someone who is interested in business, psychology and social studies and I believe that I have most of the traits needed to work in this field. I think the most special thing about myself is my curiosity for everything. I love experiencing and discovering new things. When I talk to people, there is always a desire inside of me to know their stories, what problems they are facing or what emotions they are having. I usually feel the urge to be connected emotionally and socially with people. The hope to look for deeper meaning of everything still clings to my mind until this day and I do not hesitate to step out of my comfort zone to do so. Also, to be able to look at the problem from different perspectives has always been one of my strong points and I think this trait can be really helpful when it comes to reading clients' minds. In addition, I can be confident in my communication skills as I easily know how to take in an idea from one person then get it across to another in a way that is interesting and worthwhile. Additionally, since I believe that marketing is about a team's effort rather than individual endeavor, my ability to work in harmony with others as well as my infectious enthusiasm can keep the team in high spirits to get the work done. And because Marketing is in constant development, shifting, presenting new angles and new approaches all the time, I believe that with all of my traits, I can truly shine in this field
As I was on my way to seek for a destination to go studying abroad, I just ran into Taiwan as a coincidence, but this country has really caught my attention. Being one of four Asian tigers, Taiwan has always had its reputation for not only the rapid growth in economy but its high quality education, not to mention being one of the safest countries in the world and its lovely and friendly people. To go out to see the world, experience new things and study in a professional environment has always been my lifetime goal so I would love to further my study in Taiwan as I cannot wait to explore its rich and fascinating culture and spend my college life there. After finishing my high education there, with everything I would have learned including all of the skills and practical knowledge, I will eventually come back to Vietnam and be able to apply for a job that I love.