Personal statement

Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem
solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how
you express your creative side.

I consider myself a creative person. To me, a creative person is a person who has the capacity of
creating something new or improve some situation with great ideas and I’m sure I have everyone
of these qualities. For me, the main skill I have is innovative thinking. To illustrate, when I was
in summer school in my Junior year, I created my own game by coding. It was a little bit hard for
me because never in my life I had coded a game. The truth is that in my first attempt I didn’t do
so good, but the teacher gave me time to improve it and I took advantage of the opportunity. In
addition, when I finished my game, the teacher told me that it was good and showed my game as
an example to my classmates. The game I was coding is called Star Wars coding, I created this
game in Code.org. This page is very helpful for people who want to learn how to code. There
are different games for coding, such as Minecraft, Flappy bird, and others. Furthermore, thanks
to the game I created, my father congratulated me and it was something good for me because my
father don’t congratulate me very often. In addition, apart from my skill in innovative thinking, I
am a creative person artistically. I demonstrated this when I created a poem, in middle school.
Thanks to that, the school gave me an acknowledgment for writing a poem with a good structure
and with good content. For me, was not difficult to write it, the only thing I needed was
inspiration. I found the inspiration by listening to music and reading some books. To conclude,
I would like to improve my innovative thinking and my abilities artistically to do something
good for the society. If one day I can achieve it, I would be proud of myself.

What would you say is your greatest talent or skill? How have you developed and
demonstrated that talet over the time?

The greatest talent I have is to express very good my ideas. I have developed this talent over
the time by speaking in public. To illustrate, when I speak in public, I need to think very good
what I’m going to say because it is what people is going to think about me. When I speak in
public, I lose my nervous, but the most important is that I’m winning trust on myself. I
remember the most difficult speech I had. It was when I had to talk about the challenges I have
faced. I’m saying that it was difficult because in front of me were some teachers of my school (
El Capitan High School), and were some parents. I remember before I said my speech, my
teacher talked to me and told me; ¨just say wherever you think, don’t try to memorize nothing,
the most important is what you feel.¨ Furthermore, I have developed my speaking talent by
reading books. This has helped me to much because when I’m reading books, I see new ideas,
new thinkings ways and the form in which the authors are expressing their ideas. I like to read
different types of books because there is different types of ideas, and I can distinguish which one
is better for me. I learned to use books to improve my speaking talent because my father is a fan
of the lecture. In fact, he did a career at the university of Puebla called literature and letters.
Finally, another way I have developed my speaking talent is by speaking with people. Speaking
with people helped me to understand what they are trying to know and in this way, when I’m
going to talk or give a speech I try to answer the questions of people. Those are the things that
has helped me to improve my speaking talent, but I would like to know another ways I can
improve this talent.

Describe the most significant challenge you have faced and the steps you have taken to
overcome this challenge. How has this challenge affected your academic achievement?

One of the most difficult challenges I have faced is come to the United States and go to the
school not knowing English. To illustrate, I did not like going to school because was difficult to
communicate with my classmates and teachers. Because of that, I had some problems at school
such as turn in works on time, work in class and have friends. Furthermore, at my lunch time I
was alone because when I wanted to play or pass time with someone, nobody wanted to accept
me because I did not speak English. Moreover, when I had a question or I had to speak in front
of class, some of my classmates were laughing of me because my pronunciation was not good.
Even when I needed to take the bus to go home, I didn’t even know how to say, can I sit here? Or
are you saving a seat? And some students started to laugh. I need to say that there were times
where I was saying I can’t do this, I want to go home. To illustrate, I was saying that because I
felt fear, sadness, and pain. In addition, with the pass of the time, my skills in English were
growing and growing and I started to speak English, write essays and talk to my partners and
teachers. This helped me to increase my grades, get friends and appreciate school. When I came
here I knew that my life would be difficult for a time, and I would have to face a lot of
challenges, but I never thought that this would be a hard challenge to me. Finally, I never gave
up because I was always thinking in my parents, they are my motivation to keep going and will
be my motivation to face future challenges. So far I do not regret my decision of coming to the
US because I have learned many life lessons.

Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively

influenced others, helped resolve disputes or contributed to group efforts over the time.
One example of my leadership experience was to organize a rally in Yosemite High School
during summer school. I was not the only one who did it, other students helped me but I was in
charge of lead them. To illustrate, I needed to create a game section, and maintain the students
in order. In addition, to achieve it, we gave instructions at the beginning of the event. We said
¨attention students the rally almost start, you guys need to be respectful, pay attention and have
fun without doing disaster¨. Moreover, we gave serious instructions because some students had a
bad behavior. We said ¨the student who is doing things don’t should do in school, will be sent to
the library and their teacher will take some points of your grade¨. To illustrate, we said that
because we wanted an event very good organized. In addition, the teacher encouraged us
because they knew that organize events are not easy, and they wanted to prove our leadership
and our trust in ourselves. After the instructions we gave, the rally started. We played games as
¨ El pastel partido¨. This is a Mexican game and it is about make a circle with people holding
their hands. One person needs to be outside of the circle and when someone says ¨ El pastel
partido¨ the person outside of the circle needs to run around the circle and when someone says
¨stop¨, the person outside needs to enter inside the circle. Furthermore, almost everybody
finished a little bit tired but the most important is that everybody had fun. Finally, the rally
ended as we wanted it to end and at the end of the rally, the teachers congratulated us because of
our good organization. It was so awesome for me because the effort of my partners and my mine
was recognized.