Who am I? Who will I become? Am I headed on the right journey to success? Undoubtedly, one of the greatest mysteries for any growing young person is the concept of a bright future. In my case, my life has consisted of a large number of ups and downs that created a circle, from which I was unable to escape. Nevertheless, the moment I stepped into Seattle Central Community College, my goals became more crystal clear than ever.
Born in Russia and growing up in the Czech Republic, while maintaining Vietnamese identity had influenced my way of viewing the world. Constant moving to new places had contributed to my witnessing of different world class issues and hence, shaping my character and my philosophy of life even more. Since then, my long-term goals have always been social entrepreneurship. Whether it has been constructing a solar panel system for renewable energy or manufacturing cars with anti-pollution quality, my dreams have been generalized into innovatively contributing into society as much as possible by making the life of others more simple and comfortable, while maintaining decent output out of the business. As for now, I aim to stabilize my attitude towards various different tasks and academic challenges to receive my Bachelor Degree. First of all, I would strive to gain recognition from my friends, siblings and mostly my parents. My way of thinking is if I want to gain worldwide recognition, my first step would be to earn it from someone, whom I am in debt with an unimaginable amount of grace. In the end, it all matters with whom you will spend your beautiful life with.
Even though my goals were more vivid, I entered Seattle Central Community College as a child with lots of naďve and unrealistic approaches to education. Due to the absence of my parents, it suddenly became rather difficult to cope with individual problems alone and I could not find the balance in my hobbies, education and household problems. I was too dependent on my parents and this resulted in my poor academic start with below average grades. Even though I gave my best effort in hope of finding a way to improve my academic performance, out of frustration, I was on the verge of accepting defeat and planning to go back to the Czech Republic. However, I considered the potential damage I would do to my parents, so giving up was not an option. Therefore, I was seeking professional help from my college's IEP counselor; he helped me to identify the problem. Afterwards, I tried to stay out of my comfort zone as much as possible. Slowly recovering from the failure, I managed to increase my GPA significantly. I consider that moment as an essential maturing process for me, to independently solve a problem without any influence from parents.
My main reason in choosing Johns Hopkins Carey Business School is the expectation of practicing the theories we learn in class. Without the constant use of theories, they might be forgotten over time. Moreover, practice has been widely believed to be an active learning, which is indispensable in terms deep of understanding from different perspectives, which helps us to relate things. With practice comes interaction, especially in the class and outside world. "It's not what you know, but it's who you know", the new way of doing business. Networking has become more crucial than ever. In this era, gathering people from large, different diversities leads to a higher efficiency of doing business. Currently, knowledge and skills are so broad that no human being can completely obtain them due to the scarcity of time. For this purpose, we utilize each individual's profession and skills to fill the hole in the puzzle. Trygve Reenskaug once said, "In theory, practice is simple." Another reason for my decision is the idea of "teaching business with humanity in mind." I believe social entrepreneurship with the priority to contribute to society will succeed in the long run. As far as I know, us, human beings, believe in a collective and healthy society. If one of us loses, all of us lose. With innovation of young minds that still have the space to absorb ideologies from Johns Hopkins Carey Business School will seek for the goodness of humanity. With students with the same entrepreneurial drive as mine, we might be constructing and preparing a business scheme, while studying. I have the ideas, while this school will help me to execute them. Additionally, I hope for competiveness in class, to prepare us for the real world. I also expect active students full of young passion and innovations. It will create a unique atmosphere for both academic activities and social life.
Ultimately, I treasure the comfort of speaking three languages fluently; it boosts my social interactions and communication. Moreover, I volunteered as a conversation facilitator for CoffeeTalk organization, a position with the requirement with English of native or near-native level with a decent communication level, to guide and encourage ESL (English as a second language) students, to interact and communicate with each other. Aside from work and education, I enjoy playing a team strategic game and soccer. More importantly, I relish the fact that I have the roles of being the mastermind of strategies on my gaming team and the captain in the soccer team. Despite this, my main arsenal is the experience of living in three different world continents. I have the blood, attitude and approach of an Asian person, the knowledge and worldview of a European one and an Americanized drive and ambition for a new better world. With this unique trait I am confident of not only bringing a fresh and exotic experience for my future classmates, but also the world.
