Mohammed Alghofaili

Dr. Dagher
Self-Author Essay
09/30

Self-authorship essay 1
I am Mohammed Alghofaili, an international student from Saudi Arabia. I am a
business student, majoring in supply chain management. I am a student with a
scholarship from SABIC Company, it is a Saudi company that produces plastic
productions. I am 19 years old and my birthday is this month, so I will be 20 soon. I
am a brother of four sisters and two brothers. I am the oldest among my brothers,
the third oldest among my siblings. I am a big fan of soccer, I enjoy watching and
playing it. I am happy to be here in the United States and to represent my country
as a Saudi student. Since I was a child, studying abroad was a dream, and I am
achieving it. I am planning to be an important employee in my company in the
future. In addition, I am planning to make a family, and to be a father. I am very
easygoing with others, and I like to make new friends. I am thankful for everything
in my life.

Since I was a child, my father is used to depend on me in many things in life. Being
the oldest brother has helped me gain a huge confidence. I was kind of the
responsible about my siblings when my parents are not in the house. In my first two
years in the school, I used to see my friends walking with their older brothers. I felt
lonely sometimes for not having an older brother. I remember that I talked to my
father once about it, I told him that I feel sad and lonely because sometimes I need

an older brother to hang out with and to depend on. My father felt me, he answered
me with an inspirational speech that I still remember until today. He told me that he
would be my older brother when I need that. It sounded weird for me in the
beginning. However, when I started to think about it, I found that he is my father,
but also my older brother. In that period, I spent most of my time in the house with
my father, I used to talk and play soccer with him. In my view, having my father
acting as a brother with me, helped me discover and build my personality in the
same time. Now and after many years, I felt the importance and the responsibility,
and I understand what it means to be an older brother. I have two younger brothers
and two younger sisters, and I like to spend my time with them. I feel that I am
paying back what my father had paid to me.

We all were born with a heart that is considered as the most important organ in our
bodies. The heart is the responsible of pumping the blood to the lungs and the other
parts of the body. But this is not the most important function of our hearts. Our
hearts tell us who to love and who to hate. For me, I have the same thing all people
have, which is loving and hating. I like to start with listing the things that I love. I
love my family. Being part of my family is an important thing in my life, I spend
most of my time in this life with them. They are the people whom I cannot live
without. I care about them so much. Even though I am happy that I study here in
the United States, I always think about them. I miss them all the time. However, I
am here to make them proud of me. I want to see them happy when I graduate in
2019. Talking about my family leads me to talk about my second family, my friends.
I am very lucky that I have such friends, either my friends here or back in Saudi. My
friends are the ones who know how to make me happy. When I was in my country, I

used to see them every day. I have them with me in the school, gym, and
sometimes in my house. I have other things that I really like. I like food, especially,
Arabic food. My mom is the best chef for me. I also like soccer. It is one of the things
that I really like. In my free times. I like to watch TV shows. I actually hate to talk
about things that I hate. Nevertheless, I will try to list the things that I dislike in less
number of sentences. I hate being alone for a long time. I am used to spend my
time with my family, friends, classmates and roommates. However, sometimes I
stay alone, and it is a thing that I dislike because when I do that, I feel homesick and
start to miss my family and home. Moreover, I hate studying for a long time. This
why I try to divide my studying time for finals.

I hate when people ask me about my values and my strengths. Because I believe
that people cannot discover their personalities by themselves. When I first was
asked to do the survey of my character strengths, I wasnt sure if that survey was
going to help me find my strengths. However, after I had done the survey, I was
shocked about the results. Because they are very much the same people say about
me. The results showed that my top strength is leadership. When I thought about
myself I found that yes it might be my first strength. My story with leadership began
with being the oldest brother. I was responsible about many things. I also remember
that in my second grade, I used to have a group of friends that I really like. I was
kind of the leader of that group. I was the one who organizes everything, I used to
decide where to go and what activity we can do. In that year, there was an election
to choose the president of the class. And my friends chose me to be the president.
Also in the fifth grade, my teacher chose me to be the captain of my soccer team. I
was responsible of that team. We did a great job, but unfortunately lost the final

game. My second top strength was gratitude. I am always thankful for the things
that have happened in my life. I am satisfied about everything. I am grateful for
being accepted in the best scholarship in my country, and also for being accepted
to study abroad. My third strength is citizenship, teamwork and loyalty. I really like
when I talk to my American friends about my country. I also like when they start to
ask about my culture. I feel that I am here not only to get the degree, but also to
represent my family, country, culture and traditions. My fourth strength is kindness
and generosity. I always try to be kind and to respect others. I dont care about the
religion or where people are from or what they believe. I care about how others act
with me, and how they respect me as a human. The fifth strength is fairness, equity
and justice. I consider myself as a human that is equal to everyone else. I hate
when some people treat others more because they have the same belief or
interests. We all must be treated equally. After I read my strengths, I actually agree
with the results of the survey.

We all have certain belief, some are religious and some are belief about our daily
life. For me, I have different believes. I believe in dreams. We all have dreams, and
every dream can be achieved as long as you work for it. I believe that we all need to
have goals to live. Living with no goals is meaningless in my opinion. I believe that
success is made of actions not speeches, the life appreciates who work for it. If you
want to be successful, you have to work hard for that. I believe that we all have to
respect each other. We might have different religions, belief, cultures and traditions,
but we all must have respect to each other. And last but not least, I believe that we
all are equals, we all must be treated the same, and we all are humans.

After writing about myself for almost two days, I got to discover more things about
myself. I discovered that my childhood played a very important role in building my
personality. I also discovered that my father, my siblings, and my friends helped me
overcome many obstacles in life. This why I am always grateful for having them.
Since I was young, my character havent changed. I am still that person in my
childhood but with different shape. I didnt mention my mother in this essay,
because if I had done that, I would have written above 3000 words describing her
essential part in my life. And this is much more than the maximum number of the
words for this essay.