Critical Life Experience

1. Which people and experiences in your life had the greatest impact on you?

In terms of experience, a critical life event was when I was diagnosed with a non-verbal learning disability in the 3rd grade. At any age, no one likes to hear that they are incompetent or different when compared to others. Wanting to be an equal to my “regular” classmates, I worked harder than most of them to achieve academic success, so I could be streamlined into “regular’ education classes. Even though most teachers and school psychologists were supportive, some did not think I could be streamlined. Before I attended college, I had to go for yet another evaluation with a psychologist, who told me that I was “setting my sights too high” by attending Drexel. Given my success at Drexel thus far, I would like to say that he was dead wrong in his assessment of my abilities. Luckily, I had parents that fought for my rights throughout my entire education, and they never gave up on the notion that I could be a great student

For instance, there seems to be a lot of pressure for business students to declare a major in accounting or finance. Even though I have always been a strong reader and writer, I fell into this hype by forcing myself to be the expected type of business student. As a result, I ended up taking an accounting position for my first co-op, which I knew right off the bat wasn’t the job for me. For instance, I remember trying to discuss numbers on a financial statement with a co-worker, and I said that the dollar amount was in the thousands, rather than the hundreds of thousands. After this mistake, I realized that accounting required a type of student who loves numbers, and math has never been my strong suit. Not that I can’t improve my financial skills or have an appreciation for those who have them, but I would never feel comfortable as an