| What is your most memorable childhood experience? | My most memorable childhood experience is of the times playing with my friends and brothers in my neighborhood. After school we would either explore the nearby stream and woods or get together and play either basketball or Wiffle ball. These are some of the times that I cherish the most from my childhood. |
| What immediate family member do you closely identify with and why? | I closely identify with my grandma, because she is an outgoing, hardworking woman who has shown amazing perseverance throughout her life as she fought to raise my mom and her sister on a minimum-wage salary, and also fought back from lung cancer when the doctors had told her that she would only have six months to live. She is a truly inspiring person, and like both my parents, she is someone I greatly admire and try to emulate. |
| What character traits do you admire in an individual? | The two traits that I admire most in an individual are a hard work ethic and an authentic personality. I think that it is important for an individual to understand the importance not just of working hard but mainly of setting goals and working to achieve them. I think this has a big impact on the meaningfulness of someone's life. Also, I admire people who are true to themselves and develop their personality. |
| What is the funniest thing ever to happen to you? | As a young child, I loved investigating things. I spent a lot of time exploring my neighborhood, and house. However, I also enjoyed testing the physical limits of my body. This curiosity resulted in a bit of a funny incident. One morning, for some reason, I decided it would be a good idea to see if I could fit my head through the slats in one of our kitchen chairs. To my delight, my head fit through the wooden bars with no problem. Unfortunately, removing my head was much more difficult. My initial delight turned to fear, and my parents and grandma were soon to join in my worry. After trying for what felt like close to an hour to dislodge my head from the chair, my parents eventually had to relent and sacrifice one of the slats in that wooden chair in order to release my young head from the chair. |
| If time and money were not an issue, where would you travel and why? | I would travel to China and India to experience firsthand the way people live in these fast-growing and rapidly changing countries. Growing up in America, it is hard to imagine what it is like to live without well-developed infrastructure for roads, power, and water but I would be interested to experience life in China and India to see the differences between life in America. I would also be interested in seeing the differences between life in China, where much industrialization and growth has already taken place, and India, where this growth has started more recently. |
| When and if you ever have children, what would you like to pass on to them? | I would like to pass on to them the importance of finding a passion in life. Regardless of what that is, I would want them to find something that they love and to pursue it with conviction. To me, that would be the ultimate thing that I could pass on to my children. |
