In between cramming 15 slides worth of info into 3 for a presentation this Monday, I’ve started the painful process of data-mining my life, all for the hope to finding the tread that binds all of my life experience together to substantiate my obsession with HBS…
This reflection process is a crucial first step towards crafting my application theme. To borrow from Stanford GSB’s Dean’s Corner entry on writing effective essays:
“Essays are not a marketing exercise but an accounting exercise. This is a process in which you look inside yourself and try to express most clearly what is there. We are trying to get a good sense of your perspectives, your thoughts on management and leadership, and how the business school can help you realize your goals.”Ah, that’s why I hate writing these essays… they remind me of my awful accounting classes I took during my final year in uni! Joking aside, I do think that in order for you to intelligently market yourself, you need to know yourself first, and the only way of effectively doing this is by accounting all significant events in your life that have had an influence on who you are today. In other word, good book-keeping is a pre-requisite to great self-marketing!
The way I look at it, I have 3 areas (or books) that I need to fill up with relevant stories:
1. Professional Life
2. Personal Life
3. Student Life
I have about 5 years of work experience in 2 major firms. At the moment, I don’t have anyone reporting directly under me but I’m leading various small teams and initiatives. I’m comfortable leading as well as being a proactive team player. I’m comfortable with numbers and in my analytical ability, I live by a set of principles and never compromised on them. I’ve lived in the UK for 4 years, and I’ve worked with people from various cultural backgrounds. And as an added bonus, I speak 3 languages. So I think coming up with good examples in my professional life to highlight my leadership impacts, teamwork, motivation, ethics and diversity will not me a major hassle.
Personal Life:
Ah… the elusive life outside of work! I volunteered a lot. But mostly on work-related event – stuff like leading an event management team to organise an engagement session. Problem is, these involvements are so intertwined with my work that I find it difficult to categorically put them either under the professional or personal life banner… I’m a coach to my alma mater’s debate team, I enjoy running marathons. And I used to play a lot of MMORPG… but I bet business school doesn’t want to know about my video gaming hay-days! This is certainly an area that I really need to think hard about to get any substantial evidence of leadership, ethical values, diversity, teamwork and management experience… anyone knows of any good leadership volunteering opportunity online or around KL?
Student Life:
Ah… now is where the trouble begins…
The four years of my university life was the “lost years”. Really, I was completely burnt out by the time I made it to university. You guys know how it works in Malaysia – in order to get a scholarship to study overseas, you pretty much have to mortgage your childhood to the devil (fortunately with way better interest rate than say, Freddie Mac…) and commit yourself to various leadership and extra-curriculum activities while you were in primary and secondary school. I’m not ashamed that I did it all – I played hockey for my school, I was a nationally ranked debater and captain of my debate team since form 3. I won every single academic prize offered by my school, I was on top of every exam list, I was a prefect AND library monitor. I represented my school to almost all academic events, quizzes and completion. I served the community as a St John’s Ambulance volunteer and for a short while I was in a band… and I started doing all these when I was 10 years old! So pardon me for being lazy during the university years… all I could think of during that time period was traveling around the world, enjoying different cultures and meeting as many different people as possible.
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Lucky for me, I have 3 – 5 months to improve my candidacy!
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