My top five strengths are Competition, Achiever, Learner, Deliberative, and Input, in that order. I see Competition playing a role in my current life as it causes me to not only be competitive when I am involved with any sort of game, but it also causes me to view almost everything as something that can be won. As a result, I normally try my best in all areas, motivated by the strong desire to win, no matter with what I am involved. In addition, while I may get upset by loss and defeat, they only push me to try harder so that next time I will win. Achiever plays a role in my life as it helps me to create daily rituals or guidelines which I utilize to make the completion of tasks more efficient. Additionally, it causes me to be self-critical and, thus, I work hard to correct my shortcomings. Learner plays a role in my life as it is the reason I have a deep desire to learn and improve. Furthermore, it causes me to be enticed by challenges that test the limits of my abilities. Deliberative plays a large part in my life as it results in my working as an individual performer and causes me to be able to express central ideas with clarity while in a conversation. Additionally, Deliberative also results in my preference of a small circle of friends rather than a large one. Lastly, Input plays a part in my life as it also fuels my desire to learn and know more. As a result, I often memorize complicated words or multiple meanings of words which I use to describe things with precise detail, further increasing the clarity with which I speak.

My strengths also have an active role in my academic career. Competition has a significant role in my academics as I tend to view academics as a Competition in which I can reign victorious. In this sense, I quantify my performance against others’ and this in turn motivates me to try my absolute best so as I can be victorious. Achiever plays a role in my academics similar to the way it works in my life: it causes me to form daily routines with my work to complete it as efficiently as possible. Additionally, as a result of the self-improvement portion of this strength, it helps me to study efficiently by specifically studying the ideas or concepts I have forgotten or do not completely understand yet. Learner helps me academically as it causes me to study what needs to be studied or to complete tasks that are required to be completed whenever the need arises. Furthermore, I sometimes go out of my way to test the limits of my knowledge on ideas taught in class, which helps me to understand and utilize these concepts with ease. Deliberative plays a role in my schooling as it results in my thinking through what I will say or do before I do it; I do not simply dive right into essays or problems, I think through the major point I want to get across before I begin. Also, I tend to complete work in a businesslike manner, such that I have more dignity with my work and always put forward my best.  Input has an active role in my academic career as it helps me to garner and organize information and vocabulary in my classes, which assists me in my overall comprehension of the central concepts and ideas of a course.

Knowing my strengths changes my personal goals to a degree, however it does not largely affect my professional goals. knowledge of my strengths affects my personal goals mainly in the area of self-improvement, which is extremely important to me. As such, now that I know my strengths, I can work on refining my strengths and using them appropriately so I can get the most out of them and be the best I can be, rather than focusing on my shortcomings and neglecting at what I am naturally skilled. Knowledge of my strengths, however, does not affect my thoughts on my professional goals. My professional goals remain as graduating with a Bachelor’s of Science in Actuarial Science, passing two actuarial exams before graduation, and becoming an actuary after graduation and continuing to complete exams, and my specific strengths do not sway me towards modified or alternative professional goals.

Even though knowledge of my strengths does not change my goals, I will still utilize my strengths in order to achieve these goals. I will and already do utilize Competition in the completion of my goals by gauging my work against the work of others, mainly my brother’s. In this manner I will push and motivate myself to match and possibly exceed the output of my peers, thus completing my goals to graduate and pass the actuarial exams. The manner in which I will use Achiever to complete my goals is largely circular; I will use the self-improvement portion of Achiever to improve and refine all of my strengths. Learner will assist me in my professional goals as I will be able to study what I need to study to graduate and pass the exams, but also it will allow me to take charge once I am in my career field, which will help to coordinate the section of which I am a part within a company, thus making it more efficient. I will utilize Deliberative in both my personal goals and professional goals as I treat work in a businesslike manner and take great care in making choices, which will help me to complete my work, both for graduation and becoming an actuary, in a dignified manner, always giving my best work. Additionally, my tendency to work as an individual will help me to refine my strengths through a self-improvement process. Finally, Input will help me reach my goals in a similar fashion to how it already helps me now; it will allow me to collect and categorize the information necessary for me to pass my actuarial exams and ultimately become an actuary.

I was born in Canton, Ohio, but my family moved across the country when I was two to Aurora, Colorado, where I was raised until we moved back to Ohio when I was thirteen. I picked up the trumpet in the fourth grade and I enjoy both listening to and creating music. I have been in my schools’ concert bands since the fourth grade and their jazz bands since the sixth. I also joined marching band my senior year of high school and severely regret not joining earlier when I was given the opportunity. Another interest of mine is creating poetry. Whenever I become extremely frustrated or upset, I will normally write a poem in order to straighten  my thoughts over or cope with whatever is bothering me. My final major interest is playing video games. I enjoy playing all types of video games, including puzzle games and strategy games. I especially enjoy when a game challenges me or forces me to think outside of the box, and I feel that my time spent playing video games has helped to foster my problem solving ability and my ability to reason.

In Colorado, I went to large schools with several thousand kids in them. In the fourth and fifth grades, I was in the Gifted and Talented (GT) program, which was basically an elementary school honors class. When I was just about to graduate from elementary school, I was actually not planning to continue taking harder and more challenging courses. However, my GT teacher insisted that I should, and so I, reluctantly at the time, signed up for the accelerated courses in middle school. This is particularly important as it is the reason I took the most challenging courses throughout my schooling career and likely the reason I’m here at OSU. After we moved from Colorado to Ohio, I found myself in a much smaller schooling system. I went from being in a middle school with 2000 or more kids to being in one with roughly 500. Not only the size was different, but the general attitude of the population was different. The people were nicer and I was no longer bullied for being smart, rather I was respected for it. I also found that the people all knew each other, even people in different grade levels, which was interesting as I had just come from a place where most people only knew their classmates. In high school, I dabbled around with other extracurricular activities, such as chess club and being part of the school’s stage crew, each for only a year. I was also a member of the school’s branch of the National Honor Society when I was an upperclassman. However, my main extracurricular activity was still band and I was in four different school bands when I was a senior.

I have always been a man of math; I was always better with remembering number sequences over other types of information, such as names, and I have always liked math better than every other subject. Perhaps the reason for this is that I’m a visual learner, which can be both beneficial and crippling at times. I have a hard time understanding what someone is describing without a physical picture of it, whether it be a number problem, a physical object, etc. However, when I do see something, it sticks much better in my mind. Another area of growth for me is I have a near photographic memory. I can memorize required material with several less repetitions than most other people, and I have played some memory games to try to reinforce my ability to memorize. Despite this, I have many areas of frustration. My greatest frustration and my Achilles heel is that I am remarkably competitive. This competitiveness is one of the main reasons I did so well in school. I always liked to win, be first, and be the best, and school was just another game that I could win. However, as a result, I do not handle defeat or failure well, and I am, at times, a sore loser. For example, in the sixth grade, I received a single B+ on an otherwise straight A report card from my English teacher. While this may seem trivial, my victory, so to say, was to get straight A’s, and because I failed my goal I started blaming the teacher and I remember harboring resentment against her for several years afterwards. Another area of frustration for me is that I am a very literal person, and because of this I struggle with interpretation in writing. I tend to miss most symbols and if something is not meant to be taken literally, I will not normally pick up on this and, as a result, I will garner less from the writing than most of my peers. A final area of frustration for me is that I get overly nervous when I have to talk to new people. Once I know someone, I am fine, but I have a very difficult time talking to new people. As a result, I will avoid trivial things such as answering the phone when an unknown number appears. In fact, it is the reason I did not call our floor’s RA back over the summer after I missed a call from him; I was too nervous to call him because he was someone whom I did not know.

As high school progressed I noticed more and more that I did not know what I wanted to do with my life. I had considered many options, but nothing seemed like something I wanted to do for a career. The first career I wanted to do was I wanted to create video games. However, after some time spent on simple game creating programs, I quickly realized I did not want to make a career out of the creation of video games. The next career I decided on was architecture. However, when I was on tour of several colleges with my friend, we visited many of the college’s architecture programs, and I realized that architecture was more art-based than I desired. Additionally, most colleges required a portfolio for applying to architecture, and I was not good at drawing, nor did I have enough time to become good enough to have a decent portfolio by the time graduation came around. I then turned to civil engineering instead, which I considered to be similar to architecture. However, I got to visit a civil engineering facility during a program through my school, and I found it to also be something I was not interested in developing a career out of. At about this time I was in AP Statistics as a result of a recommendation from my Algebra II teacher the year prior to take two math classes, and I found I really enjoyed statistics, more so than other standard math courses. However, I did not know how to make a career out of it, but halfway through the course my teacher told me about a job in the statistics field: actuaries, and after some research and even shadowing an actuary, I decided it was what I wanted to study in college, and so I looked for universities that offered actuarial science. OSU was on that list.