Which Is Better?

Dragomir

Dragomir

USNA '27
Joined
Mar 7, 2022
Messages
155
Hey, everyone, I am in a dilemma right now about what part of my life I should write about to answer this essay question. I received an invitation to the Inspire Program and as part of the application, I need to submit a personal essay. The prompt is to describe an experience of mine that I feel has contributed to my character development and integrity. Two things come to mind: immigration and global challenges class.

1. Immigration. So, I immigrated to the U.S. from Togo, Africa when I was 7 years old. I am someone who loves to learn about different cultures, languages, traditions, etc. Stuff like that intrigues me and I would accredit this passion of mine to immigrating to the U.S. Prior to that I was living in Africa. I lived in one place at that time in my life and only learned about one type of culture. I only knew of other West Africans, Togolese people specifically. When I went to school, everyone else was West African. We were all raised the same way. Then, I immigrated to the U.S. Now, everything is completely different from how I was used to living. The people were different. Not everyone was West African anymore. When I went to school I met kids of all different races and ethnicities. This jump into a completely new world really opened my eyes to different cultures and ignited a burning desire in me to learn more about other people's cultures. This wasn't something I immediately realized at the time as a kid. It was gradual as I grew older and met more people from other countries, of different religions, and backgrounds. But I can confidently say that moving to the U.S. and having my eyes opened to new cultures is what sparked this flame within me to learn more.

2. Global challenges. This class is a special one for me because of how it has shaped how I want to live my life. This is a class I took during my spring semester of freshman year at college. In this class, we were taught about the 7 global challenges: population, resources, technology, information, economies, conflict, and governance. As a result of taking this class, I have become very strongly inspired to leave a lasting strong impact in my community, my city, and my state. I especially want to do this pertaining to sustainability and fighting climate change. As a matter of fact, it's because of this class alone that I decided to minor in sustainability at my college and hopefully make my state more sustainable one day. This class has fueled a fire in me to embark on a path toward sustainability. And it's really not just sustainability that I've become more passionate about due to this class. I believe that I have a greater understanding and empathy for those who may not be living in fortunate conditions. In the class, we did weekly essays on a "global villager" assigned to us. This global villager was a hypothetical person living in other countries. My global villager was a boy from Vietnam and every week I had to do research and write an essay about what living in Vietnam would be like for a 10-year-old boy. Doing those essays, and doing the research has definitely helped me become more empathetic on not only those who are not as fortunate but also just life in general.

These are the two things I'm thinking of making my essay about. I believe they both would answer the prompt but I'm not really sure which one would be better. The maximum word limit is 500 words so I don't think doing both would be viable. I think it would probably be better to focus on one and maximize that one instead of splitting the essay in half. I'm just not sure yet which one to pick. Which do you think would be better?
 
The one that is most uniquely your story. #1

You may want to research whether using “accredit” or “credit” is a better fit.
 
Is your global challenges class here in the states? I ask because if that is very important to you, it could round out your essay in a manner such as......."With my immigration to the United States from Togo, I have unique opportunities such as the global challenges class." Or words to that effect. And I agree with those above. Togo is your unique story, and frankly, most Americans would struggle to find it on a map.
 
As you proofread your final version, check on:


The word immigrant is used when talking about the country moved to. Emigrant is used when talking about the country moved from. Someone is an emigrant when they leave their country of origin and an immigrant when they arrive in their new country. The same applies for the verbs “immigrate” and “emigrate.”
https://www.merriam-webster.com

​

 
I think you can probably incorporate elements of both, and blend that into how that will make you a unique, better Naval Officer. The immigration element is what makes you unique and stand out. The recognition of global challenges by itself doesn't add much -- there are many idealistic, goal oriented people coming out of high school and colleges -- but if you could tie that to service as a Naval Officer, it could be strong. I don't know what the prompt is this year ..or whether it changes...but the mission of the Naval Academy is to develop Naval Officers.
 
Old Navy BGO said:
I think you can probably incorporate elements of both, and blend that into how that will make you a unique, better Naval Officer. The immigration element is what makes you unique and stand out. The recognition of global challenges by itself doesn't add much -- there are many idealistic, goal oriented people coming out of high school and colleges -- but if you could tie that to service as a Naval Officer, it could be strong. I don't know what the prompt is this year ..or whether it changes...but the mission of the Naval Academy is to develop Naval Officers.
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Do you have any life experience leading up to the idea to be Naval officer or apply USNA inspire program?
 
THParent said:
If you start a sentence with "so", you should abandon all hope of anyone reading it.
With that written, I pick immigration.
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I wouldn't imagine that starting my sentence with "so" would be something that'd be frowned upon here, but alright.
Capt MJ said:
The one that is most uniquely your story. #1

You may want to research whether using “accredit” or “credit” is a better fit.
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Okay, thank you.
GWU PNS said:
Is your global challenges class here in the states? I ask because if that is very important to you, it could round out your essay in a manner such as......."With my immigration to the United States from Togo, I have unique opportunities such as the global challenges class." Or words to that effect. And I agree with those above. Togo is your unique story, and frankly, most Americans would struggle to find it on a map.
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Yes, it is a class here.

I see, I think I could do something like that. Thank you for the advice!
Capt MJ said:
As you proofread your final version, check on:


The word immigrant is used when talking about the country moved to. Emigrant is used when talking about the country moved from. Someone is an emigrant when they leave their country of origin and an immigrant when they arrive in their new country. The same applies for the verbs “immigrate” and “emigrate.”
https://www.merriam-webster.com

​

Click to expand...
"I immigrated to the U.S." Is that not the correct way to say it? I am talking about how I moved to the U.S. I suppose the "from Togo, Africa" part of it would imply the need to use emigrate but I think the sentence follows the rule for immigrate either way.
Old Navy BGO said:
I think you can probably incorporate elements of both, and blend that into how that will make you a unique, better Naval Officer. The immigration element is what makes you unique and stand out. The recognition of global challenges by itself doesn't add much -- there are many idealistic, goal oriented people coming out of high school and colleges -- but if you could tie that to service as a Naval Officer, it could be strong. I don't know what the prompt is this year ..or whether it changes...but the mission of the Naval Academy is to develop Naval Officers.
Click to expand...
Yes, I was definitely thinking of using both as part of my personal statement essay but since this essay is much shorter I thought it would be better to focus on only one.
 
What caught my eye from your original post was leaving Africa and coming to the US. Couldn’t have been easy. The adjustment could not have been smooth and without challenge and tribulation.

Volumes of essay material there.

Your classes sound interesting. And they pique my interest. But my gut comes back to this. How do those major life experiences speak to the essay prompt?

In your initial post you caught my attention. But what I didn’t take away was your desire to serve. Why you are seeking to be an officer in this Nation’s military service. What called you to apply?
 
Heatherg21 said:
What caught my eye from your original post was leaving Africa and coming to the US. Couldn’t have been easy. The adjustment could not have been smooth and without challenge and tribulation.

Volumes of essay material there.

Your classes sound interesting. And they pique my interest. But my gut comes back to this. How do those major life experiences speak to the essay prompt?

In your initial post you caught my attention. But what I didn’t take away was your desire to serve. Why you are seeking to be an officer in this Nation’s military service. What called you to apply?
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I want to achieve greatness. I want to achieve excellence. I want to live a life that my parents would be proud of. A life that my teachers, coaches, friends, family, everyone who has ever believed in me, and everyone who has ever helped me to be proud of. I want to strive for greatness. I refuse to be complacent. I believe that being an officer in the Navy will help me achieve this ambition of mine. I believe that attending the Naval Academy will most definitely help me achieve that ambition.

Now, this does beg the question of why the military specifically because there are other avenues in life that I can enter and achieve greatness in. I firmly believe that the military path is the path meant for me to walk on. Back in middle school, I met these two marines. It was my conversations with them that instilled in me a desire to join the military. Naturally, I wanted to be a marine at first. But my mom didn't approve and for a while, I stopped thinking about joining the military. Junior year of high school rolls around and I have to start seriously thinking about what I want to do in my life. Once again, I start thinking about joining the military. I'm looking into the careers available and the more research I do, the more I want to join. I'm especially compelled by the sense of honor that comes with being a member of the military. I want to be a very honorable man in my life. There's nothing more honorable than dying for your country.

Why I decided to become an officer instead of enlisting goes back to my ambition of achieving greatness. I believe that being a naval officer, attending the Naval Academy will help me achieve greatness. That's not to say that going enlisted won't do that for me but the trials and tribulations of becoming an officer make the officer route more appealing to me. I want to push myself to greater heights in life and the height of a naval officer is a height higher than even Mount Everest to me.
 
Dragomir said:
...I want to live a life that my parents would be proud of. A life that my teachers, coaches, friends, family, everyone who has ever believed in me, and everyone who has ever helped me to be proud of...
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Maybe a little introspection is called for here, as your obsequious nature may be getting in the way of what YOU may really want to do.

Dragomir said:
...There's nothing more honorable than dying for your country...
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There are a lot of honorable things you can do, short of this. Maybe strive for getting our enemies to die for their countries, instead.

Dragomir said:
...That's not to say that going enlisted won't do that for me but the trials and tribulations of becoming an officer make the officer route more appealing to me....
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I was an officer and I have to say that I had it pretty easy, compared to the enlisted in my charge. :-)
 
THParent said:
Maybe a little introspection is called for here, as your obsequious nature may be getting in the way of what YOU may really want to do.
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It is not. What I really want to do is join the military. I'm not doing that for anybody else. My ambition of making my parents and those who believed in me proud simply pushes me to strive to accomplish great things. That's just my motivation to be successful in life in general. But as I said, there are many avenues in life I can enter and accomplish great things. I want to do it as an officer because I want to join the military.

My parents themselves don't even want me to join. They don't want me to do the job that I'm striving for.
THParent said:
There are a lot of honorable things you can do, short of this. Maybe strive for getting our enemies to die for their countries, instead.
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I'm not sure what you mean by this.
THParent said:
I was an officer and I have to say that I had it pretty easy, compared to the enlisted in my charge. :)
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I find being a leader of a group of people to be appealing. It's something that I enjoy doing and is a position I feel most comfortable in. I don't know how easy or difficult each route is but I do know for the job that I want to do, there's a higher standard for officers than there is for the enlisted.
 
Dragomir said:
...There's nothing more honorable than dying for your country...
Click to expand...
THParent said:
There are a lot of honorable things you can do, short of this. Maybe strive for getting our enemies to die for their countries, instead.
Click to expand...

Dragomir said:
I'm not sure what you mean by this.
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Fair enough. When I used to ask someone in my charge if they were ready and I got a response like "I'm ready to die for my country, Sir!" then my response would be "Relax Tiger, I don't expect we'll need you to do that today but I'll be sure to let you know if things change."

Maybe just dial it back a couple of notches, is what I mean by this.
 
THParent said:
Fair enough. When I used to ask someone in my charge if they were ready and I got a response like "I'm ready to die for my country, Sir!" then my response would be "Relax Tiger, I don't expect we'll need you to do that today but I'll be sure to let you know if things change."

Maybe just dial it back a couple of notches, is what I mean by this.
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Ah, I see. For me, since I want to become a Navy SEAL, this "ready to die" mentality is one I've ingrained within myself. I hope you can understand where I'm coming from now.
 
The majority opinion here is for me to write about my immigration. I should write in the direction of also answering why I want to serve as an officer?
 
Dragomir said:
The majority opinion here is for me to write about my immigration.
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You’ve received a plethora of advice, all well intended but coming from people who don’t know you personally. In the end, you should write about what you feel most comfortable sharing, expressing and expounding on. It should be a story that flows naturally and that you feel confident telling. It must be genuine — a story that only you can tell and own.
Dragomir said:
For me, since I want to become a Navy SEAL, this "ready to die" mentality is one I've ingrained within myself.
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I second @THParent advice. Tone it down, Tiger. There’s a reason why Special Ops personnel are called “quiet professionals.” They stash the bravado and keep a low profile. And the willingness to die is not unique to SEALS. SWOs, sub officers, aviators and Marines are also willing to die for their country.

Finally, check your motives. Make sure you want to be a naval officer first and foremost. It’s OK to aim to be a SEAL. But you’re a long, long way from that moment of decision, and the decision may not be yours to make. Remember, the needs of the Navy always come first.
 
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