Personal Statment

Allen Li

Personal Statement

Over the past years, I've began to realize the importance of life lessons taught to me by my great grandfather. He once told me "with acquired sense of knowledge wealth will befall upon your feet." Till today I still cherish those worst spoken to me as a sense of morals to reflect on. Since I was small and the only male child in the family, great expectations were expected out of me. Even though our family lived a modest life, my parents would work long hours to pay for private school. My great grandfather believed that I should be in a private school because it will teach me better moral values in life and learn how to respect people with opposing views.

Aside from private school , tutoring programs were extended to me during my Saturday weekends to ensure my stability with class subjects. On Sunday mornings I would be learning the native language of Cantonese was required by my parents gain knowledge about my culture. In the afternoon I would have swimming classes because my parents believed that it's is best to learn things in an early age especially survival skills. My mom once told me " what you learn no one can take it away from you." In subjects that I've grown attentive to, tutoring would reinforce and allow me to exceed others in class.

The result of all these tutoring programs, I was placed in AP math which provide good grades upcoming of SAT test. I did fairly well on the math yet my average was balanced out with my weakest subject which was English. I had attained a high score of 1340 which allowed me to enroll in many of the top three High Schools. But in the end I chose the school that was next to Baruch College called School of the Future. The reason I chose this High School was the fact that my Uncle who taught math tutoring was the Math teacher in that school. It was practically free math lessons that would have to be paid if I were to attend his tutoring sessions.

As the years passes by in High School, my grades for math, exceeded many students in my class. I often found myself helping other students who had trouble in homework tutoring them. Everything changed as I approached senior year. I found myself hospitalized from a bike accident that took away that precious year of my life. Having left behind from my fellow classmates, I lost the will to graduate High school. I was in denial, yet this new twist of fate allowed new life experiences that altered and allowed me to regain the confidence to attend school again. I met a lot of new people during the period I was out of school. I had work experience with friends in a law firm, working as a bartender, and some cases even finding myself creating logos and advertisement for a friends restaurant. The most important experience was learning how to move on. One of my dear friends set me off in the right track back to school. I became inspired by his academic success in the graphic design field. I wanted to learn more and the first step to achieve this was attending back to school. I took the GED and applied for Baruch were as of now, became a student . All these past experiences have made me what I am today. With-out the extra push to learn these lessons, I would have lived a different life.