Personal Statement
What influences me most would have to be the people I choose to surround myself with. I'd say that my mom and my aunt are who have made me the person I am for most of my life, whether it's as a basketball player or as a student. Seeing all the accomplishments they achieved going through high school to college has definitely made an impression on me.
Almost everyone in my family had played basketball when they were growing up, so when I turned 3 mom had me try and play basketball and I instantly loved the sport. My mom and aunt were great basketball players when they were in high school and even in college. My aunt played all 4 years in college and my mom played 2 years in college. They taught me everything I know about basketball and always tell me ways I can improve on all skills that basketball requires. There is always room for improvement and that is something I learned at a very young age.
Something I have definitely learned about myself playing basketball is that when I set my mind to a goal I will follow through on making sure that I accomplish that goal. That includes, on the basketball court and in the classroom.
I have some academic goals for high school and college that I like to hold myself to. For high school a huge goal for me has been to graduate with an honors diploma, I guess the reason I want to do that has a lot to do with the fact that I do enjoy school. I always try to challenge myself and honors classes are more challenging than College Prep and Standard classes, those kind of classes were too easy for me and I wanted to be challenged. My goal for college is to graduate with a bachelors degree of science and then continue on to go into the medical field to pursue my dream of becoming a Veterinarian.
I have had a lot of obstacles throughout my life. I found out at a young age that I am a type 1 diabetic, I have to work extremely hard to make sure my blood glucose levels stay where they need to be so I can continue to play basketball. Sometimes it becomes difficult, but I have managed to keep it where it needs to be in order for me to play. To learn at a young age how to take care of a serious medical condition to most people would seem impossible, but for me I knew I could overcome it and handle everything very well.
My characteristics: I would have to say that I'm an extremely determined person, like I have said before I set goals for myself and I do follow through to achieve those goals. I won't let anything stand in my way of achieving a goal. I'm pretty good at making good life decisions for myself, if someone was to try and get me to go do something, I ask myself many questions before I make a decision. Questions like: Could this turn out to be something to ruin things that I have worked for? Is this something that would or could possibly disappoint people I care about, such as my mom? Is this something that I am gonna think is a good decision now but then later on think that I made a huge mistake doing? Is this gonna interfere with my school work or time I could be working on different things for basketball? If there is even a little bit of doubt in my mind then I immediately decide maybe this isn't a good idea. I'm a pretty positive person, someone can be seeing the downsides to something and I am seeing the upsides. I don't really care what people think of me, if I am doing something that makes me happy and they think I'm weird or anything like that, I don't hold that against them because to me what they think of me doesn't matter. Who I am as a person overcomes anything they could or do think of me. I'm my own person and I don't see anything wrong with that.
