Personal Statement for UCD - Essay Example

May sound cliched, but it is a fact that I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I belonged to quiet an affluent family and this experience casted a direct shadow on my early academic ambitions. Though, my parents, as is the case with most of the caring and responsible parents, expected me to work hard and do well at school, me having an easy access to all the basic necessities of life, and much more, my attitude towards academics was relatively complacent and easy going. It is not that I intended to take life casually and irresponsibly, but I felt that since I was from a well provided and well endowed family, I do afford to take is easy.

To a great extent it was true. Academic pursuits and studies did interest me, but in a very loosely and liberal sense that though I liked to read and learn, yet these efforts were not very systematic in the sense that I never intended them to materialize into exceptional grades. I felt that my primary concern should be to learn and experience things and not to let my education interfere with what I considered to be real education. This also worked for me in the sense that it was a pragmatic fact that going by my immediate family circumstances, I knew I was never to compete for a job.

Everything was going fine, until the catastrophe struck us in an unexpected way. Our well established family business was totally annihilated by a large corporate firm. This changed the things in many ways. Indeed, this had an immense impact on the entire family and the way of life we were used to. Yet, to put it more precisely, it had a great impact on me. Whatever I was, I was never a person given to daydreaming and fantasizing. I immediately geared up to the reality and facts. A thorough analysis of the family situation soon led me to the conclusion that now the things were not the same.

My sense of responsibility and sincerity forced me to face the fact that I should not now expect my family to provide me with the comfort and stability that I once had. Instead, I should do whatever was possible to emerge as an asset to the family so that they should not unnecessarily worry about me. I decided that somebody has taken away my cheese and it would not come back now. So, to begin with, I started working hard at the school so that I may get good grades and a sound academic grounding, which will better my academic and career prospects.

I also solicited a direct insight into the way economic theories worked by working for a taxation company and Charles Schwab Company. One thing that our family misfortune forced me to think about was that I often wondered whether the economic realities always worked in a random and fatal manner or whether there existed a method and reason behind them. This got me immensely interested in the discipline of economics. My work experience soon made me realize that businesses do always had a pivotal impact on the life of the people, their standard of living and the quality of life they led.

This augmented my interest and encouraged me to study economics in serious and systematic way. My academic efforts at the high school made me understand that economic