Entry 13: Influential Person

Your next essay will be about a person who has influenced you: Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence. Notice a couple of things about this prompt: it does not say the MOST significant influence, and it does not say to describe the person - it says to describe the influence. As with the significant experience essay, this essay will require you to examine yourself, and to try to figure out who you are and what kind of person you are. From there you work backward to try to determine how you got to be that way. For the last essay, you tried to find an experience that helped to form you. Now you need to find a person who did so. For this entry, try to come up with three or four different individuals that you might be able to use, and for each one describe how your relationship with him or her had a formative effect on the person you are today.

•  The first person that comes up to my mind as an influential person in my life is my mother. Most mothers are very influential. For me, my mom influenced me in two ways: she taught me (or drilled into my head) the sense of responsibility, and she also taught me about domestic skills that will help me survive (for example, doing chores such as mopping the floors, arranging and ordering things into easily accessible places, etc). I appreciate these skills a lot. Along with my mother comes my father. My father influenced me the most by teaching me indirectly that my parents and my family have spent a lot of effort and money on me, and that I should appreciate what I have and not take anything I have for granted. He teaches me this because when I see him hard at work just to earn money for the family, I will feel a sense of shame if I was slacking off. My brother also influenced my thinking. His going to college got me to actually start thinking about college. It makes the whole "going away from home" ordeal seem more realistic, and not just something that everyone is talking about. His influence tells me that I shouldn't slack off, because college is coming soon, and if I don't work hard, maybe I won't even get to go. Finally, Pamela, our head of school, is also a very influential person to me because she is a motivation for academic improvement, among other things. I also learn to really appreciate her hard work and sacrifices for us.