Describe a problem you've solved or a problem you'd like to solve.

It can be an

intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma - anything that is of

personal importance, no matter the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps

you took or could be taken to identify a solution.

Like many other people, I was an inpatient student who always tries to get any academic

problems over with as quickly as possible. I can recall more than one instance where I simply

gave up on my research project, pack up what information I had, and uses my poor English as

an excuse to gain an okay grade, and so I did. But there was one time I remember clearly, that I

was more than willing to work tirelessly to finish the research project, not for my GPA, my

teacher, or my parents, but to satisfy myself.

It was my final research project of American History, and it was not anything like an

impressive project. The requirement was simply to pick any of the significant events covered in

class and research any aspect of it in detail. I had a whole semester to do this. At first, I was

planning not to take the coursework seriously. But I found myself failed my plan several times a

few weeks into the semester, probably because I was very into History, or just that I had a very

encourageous start made me don’t know stop. It was at that point I figured out, finishing

homework with full effort isn’t as tiring as I had thought and I can do a much better and

satisfying job if I really want to. I then decided to finish everything that I am obligated to for every

course I had. It wasn’t as big of an increase in my grade as I expected since I used to make up

many excuses for my incomplete works, but I feel myself becoming more and more confident

and I am really happy I took one step further.

But as weird as it sounds, though, I was skeptical about my change, I was skeptical

about whether I really changed or not. So I decided to test it out on the final project about the
Great Depression, to make it perfect and something that can truly impress me. With this kind of

mindset I started working, with passion. I read through page after page of source, did round

oupon round of fact-check, and wrote out paragraph upon paragraph of condensed facts. The

more effort I put into the paper, the greater sense of accomplishment I felt. The whole thing then

turned into an enjoyment and keep motivating me to go even further.

The paper turned out to be not quite perfect, but I would argue that it was still very

important to me because it teaches what learning really feels like and to this day it still

encourages me to make all of my work of mine count.