Admission Statements,
LLC
Sample #3
Personal Statement: Carol Funk
One of the most successful lies of my life has been that I can do anything if I just work at it. In high school my approach was simple: if there was something worth doing, I did it. My senior year I was Debate Team President, National Honor Society President, Student Body Vice-President, Future Business Leaders of America Historian and Carbon High School Sterling Scholar. I received awards and organized successful events while simultaneously earning top scores in my academic coursework. I spent extended hours at school every day, and I was either at a debate tournament or working on an activity nearly every weekend. Whenever my responsibilities seemed overwhelming, I narrowed my focus to the most urgent activities. I became project focused, often ignoring less pressing commitments for weeks at a time, knowing I could catch up later. During the third quarter of my senior year I missed my AP Calculus class 14 of 23 times, though I managed to keep up by working outside of class. With the help of my professor and a friend, and I pulled off an A grade and a passing score on the AP exam. I often found that skipping classes to work on my own was a great way to accomplish more when I felt stressed. I learned more efficiently outside of the classroom, because so much time in class was spent waiting for class to start, for questions to be answered, and for everyone to understand the concepts. While I thrived on the social aspects of high school, I found that by eliminating most of the high school structure I could utilize my time more efficiently and accomplish goals that otherwise would have been impossible to achieve.
In college my approach changed. I found attendance to be worthwhile, and I rarely missed a day. I continued to believe that if I worked hard enough, I could do anything. During my first semester I took an honors course on African American history with several hundred pages or required reading per week. My classmates were all sophomores, juniors and seniors. Their comments during class discussions intimidated me, and for the first time, I doubted my ability to do well. Still, I kept up with the reading and never missed a class. I enjoyed the subject matter, but even more I wanted to show myself I could keep up. I dedicated twice as much time to that class as I did to any other, and I met my professor's challenge. To my surprise, I received the high score on the first exam and a perfect score on the final.
Successes like that one convinced me I could handle a 5000 level class in political science, although my previous experience in political science amounted to one introductory course. In the 5000 level class, "Foundations of the International Political Economy," I was the only student who was not a political science major. I loved that course. I dedicated hours upon hours, including most of Thanksgiving break, to research for my term paper. Again, I managed to wrap up the highest grade in the class, and I took a wicked pleasure in the look on my professor's face when, at the end of the semester, I casually mentioned that I was not a poli-sci major.
Without realizing it, I had come to believe more firmly than ever that I could handle any challenge if I simply worked hard enough.
Upon graduation from college I based my search for employment upon this belief. I learned about an opening in the corporate headquarters of Executive Women International ("EWI"), an organization for which I had interned a few years prior. I had almost no experience in website management, public relations, or publications, but I was offered the position of Marketing/Publications Coordinator for Executive Women International, and I accepted.
It was during my first ten minutes on the job that I began to feel overwhelmed. As soon as I walked into the office, the director put me on a call with the woman currently managing our website. For two hours I heard about all of the website projects currently under construction. I had never hosted a website, and I had no idea what the woman meant when she said, among other things, that our office used "WYSIWYG" software to manage the site, or that I needed to switch ISPs to Telnet onto a database to mandate a login and password for entry to secure pages. I was still reeling from that conversation when a few hours later the director briefed me on the organization's publications, marketing and public relations strategies. She briefly discussed her concerns about the current initiatives and requested written proposals for each. By the end of the afternoon I was also taking calls from our members, who total over 5000 in number and are organized into more than 80 chapters, whom I support on their chapter website, publications, marketing and public relations activities. By the end of my first week, I had received over 150 e-mail messages requesting changes to the corporate website, creation of new marketing tools, and updates on the newsletter templates that had been promised three months earlier. The director informed me of our office policy to respond to all e-mails and phone calls from our members the same day they are received.
After the first day and for the first several weeks, my head ached with new information. I was in a position where over 5000 people depended on me, where each member benefited directly from the work I did. The organization's membership had decreased over the past few years, and the members, the board and the director relied heavily on me in their efforts to turn that trend around. I wanted to do everything I could for our members because I knew that every project I accomplished made their membership either more valuable or less time-consuming. I tried desperately to keep up with the assignments I was handed by the executive director, the board of directors and individual members. But, regardless of how many hours I worked, I could not get on top of all of the projects.
When I had worked for EWI for about six weeks, we held a leadership conference in Salt Lake City for the chapter presidents, regional directors and board members. For two weeks prior to the conference, my director strongly pressured me to have projects ready for introduction at the conference. She felt I should create a website template for our chapters in two weeks, along with an instruction guide, while at the same time creating a chapter newsletter template, revamping the corporate website, putting together and editing the first quarter issue of our magazine, carrying out the PR and preparing a marketing presentation for the conference. It was impossible to complete these assignments in the time allotted, but with my stubborn belief I attempted the impossible.
The week before the conference I received what my co-editor had put together for the magazine. After one look I knew I needed to rebuild the entire issue. The articles were terrible. They were almost entirely "advertorials" from our member firms. Our deadline to send everything to our designer was two weeks away. I knew how important this publication was to our membership and image. I had to make some difficult choices. Preparing a quality issue by the deadline would require complete dedication. But if I postponed my other tasks, important projects like the PR for the premier of our Academy of Leadership would never get done. I decided the magazine was more important. I garnered support for my decision from the director and dedicated myself to rebuilding the issue.
I missed my deadlines for all of my other projects, and during the leadership conference I constantly fielded questions from our members regarding those projects. I was accountable to each of them for the decision I had made, for they had to deal with the consequences. Part of me held to my old belief and insisted that if I had just worked harder or more efficiently I could have accomplished at least a few of the other tasks. But a much stronger feeling crowded out the old one. I decided that my task was not to complete every project, but to manage the workload in a way that would yield the greatest benefit from every resource. I realized that succeeding at the position and achieving the goals of everyone in the organization were two different things.
I know in the future there will be times when I have to make decisions made difficult by my limitations, and I may often wonder if working more diligently would have brought more success. Yet, my experience at EWIs howed that my limitations are real, and I cannot expect myself to meet every challenge that comes my way. I hope to manage my time so that I will gain the greatest benefit from every moment spent, and that I will believe and be pleased with myself when I say, "That was more than I could do; this was the best I could give."
I am applying for law school with this perspective I intend to practice international trade and finance law and, after my experience at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, I would also like to learn securities law as practiced both inside and outside of the United States. I am amazed that a business in the United States can develop a joint venture with a South American government to create a product consumed in Europe and Canada. I want to spend my career furthering the integration of people around the world, facilitating powerful ties binding together the global interests of businesses and individuals.