Ever since my first year of middle school, I have been an extremely hardworking individual capable of fully experiencing my given academic opportunities, fulfilling personal goals, pursuing extra-curricular interests, and maintaining a healthy social life while balancing a stable job. While those looking at all my areas of interest on paper may think that I’ve spread myself too thin, in reality, I’ve been able to fully develop myself in an academic sense, spiritual, sense, and through the arts.
First, I have been able to maintain a 4.0 GPA ever since I found out what a “GPA” was, but that hasn’t fully satisfied me academically. Consequently, I’ve always set my goals higher and higher, striving to reach them. In the past, I’ve managed to score multiple 5’s on AP exams, including one for a class I never took, and I always try to enroll in difficult classes that challenge the way I think and inspire me to become smarter. In my free time, I read academic books such as Europa by Julio MacLennan and I do research on the internet to expand my knowledge outside of my Political Science major. This semester, my biggest goal is to maintain my straight A and Dean’s List record from the first semester, which should prove more difficult this time considering that I am currently enrolled in three times the Honors classes that I was in the first semester.
For the past year especially, listening to and playing music has been an ever-growing part of my life, becoming one of my favorite hobbies and an important way in which I de-stress. Another thing that is always on my mind is my future career and how I can set myself up for it now, even though I have a few years to go before I graduate law school. Subsequently, my main personal goals throughout my college life so far have been to build up my resume and to expand my musical horizons. A few months before college started, I picked up a guitar for the first time, before quickly realizing that it was a lot harder than I thought. I gave it up shortly thereafter, planning to return to it once college started, in stereotypical student fashion. Since the start of last semester, I have made leaps and bounds in my guitar skills, and I am now able to play full songs like “Drops of Jupiter” by Train and “To Zanarkand,” a complicated piece that originated from the Final Fantasy video game series. Next, I’ve successfully fulfilled my plans of building up my resume already, but I show no signs of stopping. Last semester, I was accepted onto two of my schools sports teams, being the men’s volleyball team and the eSports team for Hearthstone and Smash Bros. My coaches have told me that I’ve made incredible progress in both fields, and I was appointed as the volleyball team’s social media manager last week. While we haven’t had any games yet for volleyball, I currently hold a 2 – 2 record for the NACE Collegiate Hearthstone tournament. Furthermore, I was made one of my schools two Programming Assistants this past week, meaning that I’ll be in charge of setting up fun events, fundraisers, and student-life-improving programs next semester. Throughout the rest of the year, I hope to continue expanding my qualifications and getting better at playing guitar.
I got my first job working with my dad in a lawn-mowing and landscaping company back in seventh and eighth grade, but I started my first “real” job (that I unfortunately have to file W-2’s for) in my sophomore year of high school. I started at Bachetti Bros., a local shop on Kirkwood Highway, as a cashier and have been working there ever since. Bachetti’s is a grocery store, deli, meat market, prepared foods store, and catering company all rolled into one, and, since starting, I have worked in each department. This was a very important experience for me since it’s allowed me to learn a lot about what different job types are like. At Bachetti’s, I’ve done everything from catering weddings at DuPont estates to replacing ceiling tiles while rewiring electrical wires. Last year, I actually got a second job on top of my job at Bachetti’s working at the Home Depot across from the Christiana Hospital. I was able to maintain both jobs while being enrolled in school (which was virtual due to COVID-19), and I still graduated with a 4.0 GPA and numerous awards/honors, including being on the board for the National Honors Society. While at Home Depot, I worked in the afternoons and in the garden department officially, often pulling twelve-hour shifts, but I also covered some days in the electrical department. While I am not currently working due to being away school, I am still on the payroll at Bachetti’s so I go back on the holidays and some weekends to help out, and I have a job at the Bellevue Estate lined up for next summer after becoming friendly with the groundskeeper.
While I’m not quite sure what to write as a fun fact about myself, one of my biggest passions ever since quarantine started has been mental health. Mental health-related issues have often been swept under the rug, but quarantine has thrust even more people into the throes of depression and anxiety, and I think that bringing those issues to light so that people can know they are not alone and can seek help is an important step into deconstructing the social stigma around mental health and working towards a world where nobody feels the need to end their own life or hurt themselves/others. I often endorse motivational artists such as Charlie Mackesy on social media platforms or to my friends, and I am a big fan of the message behind Dear Evan Hansen, a Broadway musical about suicide and mental health that I actually focused on for my first-ever college research paper. This paper was over ten pages long and for my Honors Composition class, and I ended up getting a full score of one hundred.