College Essay # 48

48. Describe your most important academic accomplishment or intellectual experience to date. We don’t want to know about test scores or course grades, rather we want to know about your creativity, your willingness to take intellectual risks or your affinity for scholarly endeavors. (MIT)

My parents are the total opposite human beings you will ever meet. Even when it comes to what subjects they took as students in high school and college, it is the polar opposites. My dad was an engineer and took courses like Chemistry, Physics, Math and so one, while my mom majored in English and took courses like Literature, Philosophy, and History. As a child, my parents let my mind wonder and think about what I wanted become as a professional. Being my father’s daughter, I took the more logical side to things, after all that’s what I feel like I’m good at now. I don’t really like the theories and what not in history but instead I enjoy the definite answers of math.

Before winter break in my sophomore year, my history teacher assigned us a project, in which we had to read a book of our choice and then compose a research paper on it. I decided to take this to my advantage and write an essay on a book that really had me thinking about a lot of things. So I chose the book Mayada: Daughter of Iraq by Jean Sasson. This book talked about her imprisonment in Baladiyat prison in Iraq after she was accused of putting flyers again Saddam Hussein and his political party. With every page, this book turned into a rage for me. I was unable to fathom why a human being would do something like that. I returned to school ready to write an amazing paper with my ideas and thoughts into it. I wasn’t really worried about the grade because this was something that I really wanted to write about and something that was really passionate about.

When the assignment was handed out I wrote an essay about the ill treatment of the populace by the Soviet Union and Saddam Hussein because of their paranoia about keeping the power they gained. I worked hard on it from day one. Usually I’m a procrastinator. I slack off and I do my work at the very last minute when it comes to really big projects such as this. I was thinking about putting it off for a week or so because we had a month to work on it. But I decided that if I wanted this to be strong, I had to start from the very beginning. So, I was on my way with the research and with the writing. After a month long hard work, I was ready. I had proof read it a hundred times. I sent it to my mother to proof read, I made my friends read it over and over again, and I read it day in a day out. 

At this point, I was determined to get my point across and I was determined to get a good grade on it as well. I worked to hard not to. For everything I submitted in my history class, I was unable to get anything above a B+; I really don’t understand why, but it was just the case.

However, when I got my paper back, my teacher was really impressed with the quality of work that I had present. He even commented on my work ethic throughout the project. He said it was visible in my work and was very proud. With this assignment, I changed my way of learning and working. Now, I try to procrastinate as little as I can, and try to get my work done before hand so that I can get it checked and make it even better.

This was that one thing that changed my highest score in my history class from a B+ to an A.