Columbia University personal essay - a sense of who you are
Facing the challenge - the way to succeed
An experience from the past two and half years has taught me something that will be invaluable for me in the future. I have learned not to flee but to stay and face something that is unavoidable in life: challenges and difficulties.
Unlike my classmates, Swedish is not my mother tongue. It is in fact the third language I learned. I came to Stockholm when I was seven and for the first three years I attended an international school. When it was decided that my family and I were going to stay in Sweden permanently, I was thrown into a Swedish school.
During my first year at Enskilda Gymnasiet, the inadequacy in my Swedish proficiency started to become more and more noticeable. My first two essays from the course Swedish A were filled with dispositional and grammatical errors. They also lacked, as my teacher had called it, "a decent flow". By the end of the first term, I hated everything that had to do with Swedish because it screamed the words 'incompetent' and 'dumb' to me. In frustration, I tossed away my Swedish notebooks, but deep down inside, I kept asking myself 'am I having the right attitude?'
When spring came, I decided to give extra Swedish tuition a shot. Even though I was feeling pretty dejected, a part of me thought that it was time to do something. That spring, I buried myself in stacks of books and papers, and wrote one essay after another. As my second year in high school approached, I stood before two choices: I could either take the course native Swedish B or the course Swedish as a Second Language. Shall I challenge myself or shall I flee from the tough difficulties that faced me? My decision was the former one because I wanted to show myself that I could reach the native standard.
That fall, the first assignment in Swedish B was an analytical essay about a book my classmates and I had read that summer. I sat in front of my computer four nights in row writing and deleting until every sentence got perfect, and it was one of the best moments in my life when I got an A with a star on the assignment. This achievement gave me the encouragement I needed as I continued to fight for the highest grade in Swedish B. The biggest reward came in March when I was one the few who got an A on the mid-term grade report in the course.
I know now that the right way to tackle a difficulty is not to give up. If I face and work on it, I will make it. In the future, I will face more and bigger difficulties than what I am facing today. I may not succeed in dealing with them at first, but I will definitely not turn my back on them and just walk away. I will persist and improve until I succeed. As life continues, there will be plenty of frustration and tears, but if I have the right attitude, nothing is impossible. If practice makes perfection, then tenacity makes success.
Facing the challenge - the way to succeed
An experience from the past two and half years has taught me something that will be invaluable for me in the future. I have learned not to flee but to stay and face something that is unavoidable in life: challenges and difficulties.
Unlike my classmates, Swedish is not my mother tongue. It is in fact the third language I learned. I came to Stockholm when I was seven and for the first three years I attended an international school. When it was decided that my family and I were going to stay in Sweden permanently, I was thrown into a Swedish school.
During my first year at Enskilda Gymnasiet, the inadequacy in my Swedish proficiency started to become more and more noticeable. My first two essays from the course Swedish A were filled with dispositional and grammatical errors. They also lacked, as my teacher had called it, "a decent flow". By the end of the first term, I hated everything that had to do with Swedish because it screamed the words 'incompetent' and 'dumb' to me. In frustration, I tossed away my Swedish notebooks, but deep down inside, I kept asking myself 'am I having the right attitude?'
When spring came, I decided to give extra Swedish tuition a shot. Even though I was feeling pretty dejected, a part of me thought that it was time to do something. That spring, I buried myself in stacks of books and papers, and wrote one essay after another. As my second year in high school approached, I stood before two choices: I could either take the course native Swedish B or the course Swedish as a Second Language. Shall I challenge myself or shall I flee from the tough difficulties that faced me? My decision was the former one because I wanted to show myself that I could reach the native standard.
That fall, the first assignment in Swedish B was an analytical essay about a book my classmates and I had read that summer. I sat in front of my computer four nights in row writing and deleting until every sentence got perfect, and it was one of the best moments in my life when I got an A with a star on the assignment. This achievement gave me the encouragement I needed as I continued to fight for the highest grade in Swedish B. The biggest reward came in March when I was one the few who got an A on the mid-term grade report in the course.
I know now that the right way to tackle a difficulty is not to give up. If I face and work on it, I will make it. In the future, I will face more and bigger difficulties than what I am facing today. I may not succeed in dealing with them at first, but I will definitely not turn my back on them and just walk away. I will persist and improve until I succeed. As life continues, there will be plenty of frustration and tears, but if I have the right attitude, nothing is impossible. If practice makes perfection, then tenacity makes success.