When I turned 15, I took on my first paid employment at Tim Hortons. Many of my peers warned me that I was about to embark on a terribly difficult experience. Nevertheless, I still accepted the job. I wanted to work, and If that was what it took, I would face it as a challenge.
However, the job immediately proved to weigh me down. I started off working anywhere from 30-40 hours per week. It would constantly try me from all angles, putting my time, grades, and even confidence in jeopardy. In training, the customers did not show any sympathy if mistakes were inevitably made. I had little time for socializing, extracurriculars, or even schoolwork. However, perseverance was key, as I constantly worked at my weaknesses and built them up into strengths. I would stay up late and wake up early to do school work. I involved myself in sports and clubs that ran at lunch instead. It seemed impossible at first, however I did not give up.
Ultimately, I came out great at my job, excelling academically in school, and with endless transferrable skills in hand. In grade 12, I am able to now prioritize my academics ahead of work because I have made a sufficient amount of money ahead of time. Despite the difficulty, having a job is very important. Not only because it is important to save and plan for the future, it teaches you how to balance and prioritize responsibilities, deal with stressful situations, and work as a team towards a common goal. More specifically, I learned how to manage my time early in life. Now I know to plan out everything neatly to avoid both stress and being overloaded. I can attest to jobs in high school being difficult, but the benefits are infinite!
I am so inspired by your experiences and cannot wait to say that you are so amazing. Your vivid examples and elaborate details make the essay impressive.
As it is a SUPP. ESSAY, I would give you a little suggetion:
from 30-40 hours per week → from 30 to 40 hours per week → from thirty to forty hours per week (to make it more formal)
I hope that you will succeed.
Best wishes!
Christina, what is the word limit on your essay? It seems like you wrote this in a rush so you were not able to properly depict the aspects of the prompt that could have helped to introduce you better to the reviewer. I speak of the second paragraph where you begin to discuss the difficulties of mixing job training, actual job performance, and your academic life. In order for the reviewer to understand the lessons that you learned, he must understand what obstacles you had to overcome, which taught you these lessons. You can't just give him an overview or summary of what your early work life was. You need to actually tell him the situations you were involved in.
If you would like, you can pick the most trying situation that you found yourself in, explain what happened, how you reacted, and the lesson you learned from it. That way you truly depict the prompt demand of picking a job and then describing the greatest learning impact that you got out of it. One specific story told is better than a generalized statement meant to encompass all your experiences and lessons.
This essay still has room for development, which is why I made the suggestions above. I hope that you consider them for the further improvement of your personal statement. It has the potential to be very good. Right now, it is just average. So let's bat for very good to excellent :-)
