Question: Outside of your professional persona, who are you? Please note this essay is intended to get a sense of your personality and potential contribution to the Fuqua culture.
When I leave work, I go home to what I consider my greatest accomplishment ?my family. Every day, I learn more about balance and prioritization not from some project management class or cross-functional meeting, but from my husband and my daughter. As important as this application is to me and my goals, I started tonight by having dinner with the family and giving my daughter a bottle and a bath. Admittedly, I didn't cook dinner and we ordered from a local Chinese restaurant with wonderful Sesame Chicken. I believe that it's OK to be unconventional. I may never be the perfect mother, but as long as I ensure that we provide the best environment for raising our daughter and that we spend quality time with her and each other, it doesn't matter.
When I'm not filling out business school applications, I also hang out with friends. Sometimes we go to the gym, sometimes we gather the kids and have play dinners and sometimes, after the children and husbands have gone to bed, we go out for a beer. However, a typical night is more likely to revolve around my husband, and the two of us spending time together. We'll go for a walk with the stroller, or read a book together, or just lounge on the couch talking about our day. Prior to [deleted]'s birth I spent quite a bit of time with Junior League, but I've taken a leave of absence this year so as to spend more time with her, because family is my first priority.
It's extremely difficult to be a young mother, a wife and a friend, and still work effectively in a fast-paced and demanding industry. However, assuming these identities allows me to bring more to each role ?because I am unique in the way I perceive, approach, and solve problems.
For example, when study groups approach organizational behavior dilemmas such as work-life balance, I understand the issue. A group of single males can provide input on the potential impacts of a decision to organization members, whereas I appreciate different facets of the situation. To ensure organization success, one must vet recommendations with a diverse group mixing individuals of different races, genders and marital statuses, where all groups are important stakeholders. Analogous to organizations, a good business school will have a diverse group of students, to which I can add substantial value.
Another reason why I can add to value to the school is that I personally value working in groups. I think it is extremely important to put the team above the individual ?I cannot think of a single leader who succeeded in a vacuum. Because I value groups, I work hard to make sure that my personality facilitates cohesiveness in a team.
Cohesiveness can be hard to achieve: most people have good intentions, but divergent methods of how to tackle an issue. People are different ?we have different backgrounds, different experiences and different perceptions which lead us to different and conflicting methods of acting. I think that this is the most challenging aspect of working in a group, but most rewarding when recognized and leveraged.
Many times I've seen first-hand how disparate perceptions cause struggles and infighting, especially diverse teams. On one occasion, we found ourselves in a precarious situation and a team began disintegrating. The ultimate disconnect was between myself the other group leader; we had to build our relationship first to set the stage for the group. She was an open lesbian, which made it difficult to identify a common bond between the two of us. It took quite some time to recognize mutual interests, but we did through children ?I had my daughter and she and her partner had adopted two children from Eastern Europe. After several lunches of relating funny anecdotes of parenthood, we began to have a common framework, and our relationship became much stronger. This laid the foundation for appreciating each other's unique talents. On many points, I found her knowledge, insight and approach to be so dissimilar and complementary to my own that our combined efforts produced incomparable results. In this case, when our relationship improved, the group dynamics improved, and we were able to leverage the diversity of the team.
This personal value I place on teamwork and my unique life perspective among business students make me a rare candidate, and I feel strongly that I can contribute significantly to the learning environment at Fuqua School of Business.
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