College Admissions Essay: What Makes A Leader?

What makes a leader? Is it someone who stands on a hill giving instructions, or someone who sits by your side and guides you to a solution? Can a leader be someone who works hard and in the process shows others that their goals are attainable. There are many ways to be a leader, but society likes to stifle the notion that if your role within a grander picture is not unlike that of a captain who grips the wheel of their ship while barking orders at their crew than you must be a crew member. The belief, that if you do not have absolute influence than you have no way of making a change, is dangerous. It tramples the creative foresight of people the world over; people who could have made significant improvements in their community, in their country, and in our world. I’m a leader because I’ve shown others around me if you work hard enough even a poor boy raised by a single mother can be afforded opportunities he would never have received otherwise. A leader needs perspective. It’s easy to shy away from the fact that there are people in our communities who need help. People who need food to feed their families when they cannot afford it, and affordable
I’m pursuing computer science because I find great joy in it, but I also see opportunity. There have to be better ways to utilize computers to help people than there is today. I intend to find these methods. Very few people are thinking of computers in relation to how they can have profound positive effects on people’s lives. I’m not talking about putting pizza at the touch of a button, I’m talking about computers that learn to recognize depression in their users, or teach kids any topic they want to learn in the way they learn best. I’m going to show people that software development can be more than a for-profit practice. I’ve been leading by example my whole life, and there’s no reason to believe that’s going to change when I leave the lab