Since having to write these Statement of Purpose/ Personal Statements for graduate school applications, I've been doing a lot of introspection into the last ~7 years of my life.
A theme that I will probably end up including in these essays is how I've grown in terms of my understanding of what success really is.
For me, high school was a lack luster experience. I was an under-achiever, not stupid, but not MENSA smart either. If I wanted to be a straight A student instead of an A-B student I could have been. If I wanted to take more AP courses and do well, I could have. But for me, in high school, I never relished in success mainly because I thought I was could never been successful. Maybe it was because of my insecurities about my A.D.D., and feeling like I was born defective by design and could never achieve and compete with those born normal. Or maybe it was because my eldest sister, smart as hell, set the bar so high I felt it wasn't worth challenging myself. Or maybe it was my lack of interest in anything but computers and programming. I don't know for sure, it's probably all of these and more.
But since college I've come to realize that success isn't really about how smart you are. Albeit, it is important. But rather, how much you make yourself stand out and get noticed is more important to successfulness.
How do you view success? How do you quantify or describe the modes of achieving success?
