Personal StatementHmmm………What should I tell you about myself? You, the person who will decide my destiny, my destiny if I go to CU-Boulder, go to live in Colorado, go snowboarding in the mountains, meet a lot of interesting people and have a wonderful experience... I better be make myself look worthy. First of all, I want you to know that I am a peerless individual, whose outlook on life is one of total optimism. Over the course of my 18 years, I have made friends with people from all walks of life. I learned to empathize with almost every one of them, gaining maximum understanding in a variety of extraordinary characters. One of my favorites, a homeless woman named Polly, tells the most incredible stories of love and the many men she has met in her 54 years of life. He lives under a bridge and earns his living by begging, yet he seems so happy and dandy, and manages to make me smile every day. He's the kind of person who makes me appreciate all the little things that people like me normally take for granted. I come from a family where parents struggled to start over in their 30s in a new world, America. They came here as refugees from a country whose leader had abandoned his people, leaving them in a four-year nightmare in which more than two million people were killed. That country is Cambodia. The parents arrived in America, after surviving so much wickedness and cruelty, without knowing a word of English, yet they persevered in their desire for a better life for their two daughters. One of them, the greatest, is me. My father made me start training in Martial Arts, Tae Kwon Do, when I was 13 years old. He wanted me to have self-discipline and self-confidence…well, I guess I should thank him because all that training worked. Tae Kwon Do for me is a lifestyle. The tenants I practice are integrity, self-control, perseverance and the indomitable spirit. They may seem cheesy, but if you think about it, hey, it's actually very ethical. My dad taught me martial arts and my 14 year old sister introduced me to snowboarding when I was 16. I love snowboarding! I basically taught myself how to board, well...with the help of my sister's skill. I plan on doing Tae Kwon Do and snowboarding for the rest of my life! I can't stress enough how much I love it! My parents and I have a lot of expectations for me...... middle of paper ...... from the National Honor Society (and I would also like to thank the reader for having the persistence to get this far). My involvement with People to People has taught me traits such as personal responsibility and integrity, through Jets TEAMS and my participation on the Granby Tennis Team I have learned the importance of teamwork and group dynamics, and being a web -master for a completely non-profit website experience, I learned how to be selfless and how rewarding this can be. I hope that all of these cases have already been worked out thoroughly enough in the preceding paragraphs that I do not need to do so again. If not, perhaps I don't really have what it takes to become a member of the NHS. I believe that I have now demonstrated that I possess the qualities of scholarship, leadership, character and service. I also feel that if I were lucky enough to gain inclusion in the NHS, I would do nothing to detract from the prestige and respectability associated with the National Honor Society. But ultimately this is a choice that is up to you, the reader. Now that I've had my say, it's time for you to have your say…