Berkeley essay

Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud, and how does it relate to the person you are?

     In every success story since the dawn of the modern age, those people have been asked “what drives you?” or “what is the secret to your success,” in other words. Every answer is usually very different; so far in my very young life, my success is owed to two items: ambition and self- discipline.

     In my young years, I witnessed some very trying times; times that decided the outcome of my life based, on how I reacted to them. Witnessing events such as a death in the family, or a relative having a run-in with the law, sorrow can take its effect on a young boy; even cause him to give up on his dreams and aspirations. That was never the case for me, I guess because it never really affected me directly. What I did instead is use that as fuel to apply myself even more, even more compellingly, to pursue ultimate goal; and in a way to let my light outshine the dark times in my family.

     Now that I am in high school, my ambition and self-discipline have grown together and I have taken them to a whole new level. I very much enjoy challenging myself, so I took every possible AP class that was available to me. Four AP classes brings a ton of homework, but it’s all part of challenging myself until I push myself to the breaking point, but I haven’t hit that point yet. My teachers and counselors tried to talk me out of it, calling me absolutely insane, but I just saw it as adding credentials to my college resume, and it wasn’t really that difficult.

     My junior year I was promoted to project manager of our moonbuggy team at school, which was a whole other load of work added. I was responsible for making sure we had all the material needed to complete the project, distributing different tasks to all the team members, and making sure the project was completed on time. This meant for about twelve weeks in the middle of the year, I was at school six days a week, an extra 35 hours working on the project. This alone was considered a full-time job by most of my peers, and even that was before being a full-time student came into the equation.

     Now I am heading to college, and no matter how difficult it may be I know I will be able excel. The reason is that I have already tested it; no matter what life throws at me or how difficult my studies are, I know I will be able to perform to the best of my abilities and move that much closer to realizing my dream of becoming a mechanical engineer.