Personal Statement - Philip W.

For a long time, good grades and approval were the main motivating factor behind my work, and I rarely committed to something outside my obligations. If I were writing something, I would give up on it after a couple days. If I watched educational videos, I usually wasn’t giving it my attention and was just using it to cover up my procrastination with pretend productivity. I never learned a piece of music outside of the ones assigned to me, and I very rarely picked up a pencil to sketch something outside of art extracurriculars. I never stepped outside my comfort zone. I did everything I was told to do, and nothing more.

That was how it was for 13 years.

And then one day I came across a video series on calculus during one of my pretend productivity sessions. With the intent of getting a head start on my classmates, I decided that I could spare just a portion of my brain to actually do something. I bought the cursor over the first video and clicked. It was a beautiful presentation, a pulsing package wrapped in incredibly stunning visuals, laced together with simple explanations, and warm and alive with the heart of the topic itself. By the end of the first video, I had completely doomed myself to the hook, and by the middle of the series, I had convinced myself that I had to learn introductory calculus right there, right now!

So, for the first time in my life, I booted up my computer with the intention of pursuing something on my own terms, and I loved every second of it.

It was challenging, clamoring my grasp around the relatively elusive concepts, wrestling with the complex algebraic manipulations, and maneuvering around the logic of the proofs. Moreover, it was fun! And I didn’t want to stop. I moved onto basic programming, higher-level mathematics, and physics, culminating here, with all my humble “achievements,” a long, long list of lofty goals, and some important lessons I had picked up along the way.

First, I found my first woes with the education system for not teaching us this stuff earlier. Second, I had found how much I loved knowledge, whether it be its acquisition or spread. I learned how much I loved physics, computer science, mathematics, etc, and have (maybe foolishly) sought to dedicate my livelihood and life to knowledge. And out of that love, I found motivation, and that taught me one very, very, important thing that should’ve been obvious much sooner.

You are your best motivator.

Of course you aren’t your best teacher! You can’t teach yourself something you don’t know! Educators, friends, and family have much more knowledge than you do. But if I had never told myself to click on that video series, and never pushed myself beyond it, I wouldn’t be here, even with all those wonderful resources just behind the curtain. I wouldn’t know a single thing about calculus, much less heard about analysis or topology or abstract algebra, I wouldn’t know a single thing about programming or computer science, and I wouldn’t know a single thing about modern physics. I would’ve just sat ignorant in my tiny sand castle in the huge expanse of knowledge for who knows how longer. But because I didn’t, I am here where I stand now, where I am my own motivator.