Essays i wrote for school application #1

Essay#1 Give a candid description of yourself. Stressing the personal characteristics you feel to be your strengths and weaknesses and the main factors, which have influenced your personal development, giving examples when necessary.

Encouragments and supports from my family, Buddhism teachings of middle path and the diverse environment of Thailand are the key elements that cultivated my characteristics, some of which are satisfactory- some are yet to improve.

My Favorite quality is the appetite to learn. Although sometimes I learned something just out of curiosity or for sheer pleasure; for instance, taking French lessons with no foreseeable usage of the language; but I am a believer in the power of knowledge, certain that the benefit of learning will unfold itself sooner or later, like when I discovered xxxx and its Fontainebleau campus where my humble knowledge in French could pay off.

Another quality I like is my resilient spirit. Knowing that I can pick myself up after a failure allows me to follow my instinct, take risk and try new things at my best effort and not afraid to go the extra mile in order to achieve my goal. My philosophy is even if I fail, the experience would still constructively complement my next attempt.

Empathy is one thing I have to be careful with. I am a good listener who is also sensitive that I learn quickly about the concerns of people around me. Compassion usually gained me trust and rapport from friends and coworkers, however there were instances I caught myself losing my focus trying to please others. Though I know that it is important to find a balance and stay on course for non-compromising matters, that is still easier said than done. I still need more exercises to master this skill.

I also found maintaining the level of trust and rapport is a tough job. To sustain good understanding, sufficient information sharing is vital. But in reality, there are some pieces of information that could be inappropriate to share. So far I have learned that setting a right expectation from the beginning could help prevent excessive disappointment, though not completely.

There might be some other weaknesses I have, but at the moment I would like to work on my ability of improvisation-or the lack of it to be precise. For example, if I were to give a presentation, I would need to have the outline ready and much enough time to mull the detail over. In today’s rapidly changing and unpredictable environment, the importance of improvisation is becoming imperative not only in term of presentation, but also for the organization management and leadership quality. As my ambition has a fair share between management role and communication industry, improvisation is surely a practical skill to possess alongside an MBA.