Personal Statement - Principal Discretion Program
Excellence has been a personal goal of mine since I was a child - ever since I recognized how good it feels to succeed, I have done everything I can to find and earn that success in whatever I set my mind to. In my career as a student so far, that success has been mostly related to my schoolwork and my sports experience, but I try to apply these principles to my life as well.
Currently, I am on the Honor Roll as a football player for the Calumet City Chargers (www.calumetcitychargers.com), an experience which has enriched me greatly. I have made many new friends in my time there, and have honed my skills in the sport of football - incidentally, this also helped me learn the importance of teamwork and competition. Ever since I began my career with the Chargers, I have learned the value of hard work and appreciating the role one plays in a huge team or organization. This hard work has paid off; I have earned awards for team participation, and have even been awarded the title of Iron Man, the Charger equivalent of Most Valuable Player (MVP). All of these things have contributed to a great feeling of accomplishment in the Chargers, an organization that has done many things to help me understand my strengths and value as an individual.
However, I do not restrict my activities just to the football field - I have attempted to make a difference in my community as well. I have several younger cousins, ranging from first to fourth graders, all of whom I am very close to; they often ask me, as one of the few older role models they have, to help them with their homework. I am happy to do this, as it also helps my own study habits, and I get to spend time with some of my favorite people in the world. They genuinely have fun when I help them learn math, social studies and English, as do I; my aunt tells me that their grades have been improving a lot since I started tutoring them, and they have been getting into less trouble at school. I'm extremely proud of them, and feel at least slightly responsible for making learning fun for them, and teaching them the value of education.
In addition to private help with my cousins, I also participate in a youth group at Covenant United Church of Christ in South Holland, IL (www.covucc.org). There, I practice my own faith, and engage in group activities that benefit the community, like food drives and entertaining senior citizens at retirement homes. Through this work, I feel like a much more integral part of my community, and that I am doing good works. I am certain that my work in the youth group has improved me as a person and as a Christian; it is one of my greatest goals in life to be an inspiration and a boon to those around me.
This desire to be a better person extends to my schoolwork; I attempt to maintain good study habits, as previously mentioned. The weekly tutoring of my cousins keeps me fresh, and reminds me to maintain good study habits; it provides quite a bit of accountability for my own actions in school, as I want to keep up their good example. I always complete my own assignments on time, and take whatever chances for extra credit I can, as I see those just as extra opportunities for learning. The more I can do to better myself, the better off I will be; both my general course studies and my athletics are ways to hone myself as a complete and well-rounded individual. Luckily, I am able to multitask easily between these two pursuits; I never allow my sports work to get in the way of my academics, but that just means I work just as hard to catch up on my schoolwork to allow myself to enjoy my time on the field. It has taken me years of building up the willpower, but I am confident in my ability to maintain discipline regarding both of these pursuits.
Apart from all of these accomplishments, I also try to loosen up and have fun. I believe myself to be extremely easygoing and friendly, and I always do my best to reach out to new friends and keep in touch with old ones. I have a close-knit group of friends I hang out with on most days, where we will either play touch football, go to the movies or play video games at home. We've been good friends all throughout school, and have helped each other through thick and thin; I can safely say that I'm a better person because of their influence, and I'd like to think the same is true of them.
All of my effort in my friendships, community outreach, sports and my academic work has all been to improve myself and work towards excellence as much as possible. I am reliable and dependable, and I am always willing to go the extra mile to get the job done. This has made me a valuable asset to my friends and family, as well as my school; I do my best to appreciate the gifts I have been given every day, and do the most I can with them. My relationships with my teammates, my family, my friends and God mean more to me than anything, and I do everything I can to make them proud. In turn, I make myself proud by being as well-rounded, versatile and hard-working as possible. My continuing search for excellence is something I take a great deal of strength from, and hope to keep doing as long as I am given the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of the people around me.
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