College Essay # 63

63.   How has your family history, culture, or environment influenced who you are? (University of Florida)

There has not been much tradition in our family to “get to know each other.” My family never really focused on the pasts and the history and the culture, instead we looked at the now and the future. Though I never really understood that, and don’t still quite understand it now, there are some things I learned by just asking. I didn’t know that someone could just give an answer when you just ask, not in my family anyways. For example, I learned that my paternal grandfather was the governor and was the one who signed the Nepalese currency for seven or eight years. Nor did I know that my maternal grandfather was the zonal commissioner for a certain region in Nepal. Nor did I know that he used to meet people like Indira Gandhi and the famous John F. Kennedy from time to time during his visits. Nor did I know that my maternal great-grandfather was a famous army general who died young at war and left my grandmother fatherless from a very young age. Nor did I know that my youngest uncle from my father’s side flourished as student at Woodstock twenty something years ago while I sit here and struggle to stay up to date with my blogs.

But these things don’t really influence me as a person, because all these things are their respective achievements, not mine. They don’t really help me become a certain type of person. Instead, it allows to be aspire to have achievements if not similar, close to what they achieved in my own way. I want to take the risks and the steps they did to become the people they became. I don’t want that sort of “fame” or status; instead I want their accomplishments. Yes, what they were as human beings and whom they knew and associated with does amaze me and do make me want to become somewhat like that, their accomplishments are more striking to me. Someday, I aspire to be the people they were. The ones who tried to take care of their country, who served their country, who took care of the people they loved, and who put their heart and soul into everything they did as leaders from day one.