Upon completion of your degree and when you return to your country, in what ways will you give back to your community?

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  Upon completion of your degree and when you return to your country, in what ways will you give back to your community?
  

Two years ago, there was a fight in our neighbor's house. Uzbeks are in such close contact with their neighbors that they try to do whatever they can to help. Therefore, my dad and I went to our neighbor's yard. We saw that our neighbor was in the middle of the yard. His eyes were blank, and he kept repeating one sentence: "Will I be saved if I kill myself? Will I get rid of you if I die ?!" His wife was standing sadly near to him. "I am in debt to marry my son," shouted our neighbor. Then I remembered our neighbor's lavish wedding to his son. 120 kg of plov(our national food) was prepared, 700 people were invited to the marriage: ahh, this wedding is one of the biggest mistakes of our Uzbeks Society. A minute later, our neighbor's wife saw my father and me and comforted her husband: "Stop it, press yourself," she said, then she turned to her daughter and said, "When will you come to your senses? When I sent him to bring bread, she brought a book! Will you buy a book for ten thousand sums, idiot?! Would a book give you food and bread?"
We just saw our neighbor's eighth-grader daughter, who was two years younger than me. That girl was leaning against the porch pole, covering her face with her palms, silently crying. I left the house in silence, and my father was about to talk to our neighbor. To be honest, for the first time in my life, I was ashamed to be Uzbek. The moral of this story and why I chose to study Economics is that, as we can see, my neighbor did not know how to plan, analyze, manage, and organize his money. He spent all funds he had on one wedding, and therefore he had no money left to spend on her child's future. I realized that planning, analyzing, managing, and organizing are essential skills in everyone's life. I realized that without learning these skills, the probability of making mistakes in every field was high.
Thus, I decided to study at "International House Tashkent" Academic Lyceum, which is specialized in Economics and Business, since Economics could teach me skills that I wanted to learn. Fortunately, I am obtaining these skills at my Lyceum. On top of that, studying Economics helped me realize my mission in my community: I decided to help people like my neighbor's girl in my community. Then I founded the "Bookworms" Club. In this Club, people can exchange their books with others and read many books for free. At the end of each month, members gather and share their thoughts, notes, and opinions about the book they read. The essential thing in this project is that we are sharing knowledge and helping people who need our help. That girl who bought a book instead of bread is one of the active members of the Club, and she read 23 books in our project. With knowledge of Economics, I am trying to help people make the community a better place right now. It helped me to realize myself and found my motto for my life: "Instead of complaining about the darkness, it is better to light a single candle and eliminate the darkness."
Apart from that, I want to study Economics since it develops a toolkit of abilities, ideas, and ways of thinking that I can use for various issues. The study of Business and Management and public policy is based on economic analysis. A bachelor's degree in economics equips you with strong mathematical and statistical abilities and applying economic ideas and models to problems in Business, Finance, and Government. Economic principles can also be used to decipher the logic of complex data, grasp how things relate to one another, and perceive the bigger picture. Understanding the economy of Uzbekistan continues to exist as a Soviet-style command economy, I would like to change it by using the education I hope to receive from the Drexel University Economics Undergraduate Program. I want to give all my efforts to accelerate Uzbekistan's economic transition to a sustainable and inclusive market economy.

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  What has been your most valuable learning experience in life, however large or small? How did it change the way you view the world and react to it?
  

I did not want to go to my relative's house because I knew my relatives would ask me many questions, and it would be difficult for a kid who could barely say his name in public because of his shyness to answer these questions. I was that type of child who picked up to clean every room in the house instead of just buying eggs from the store when his mom suggested his brother and him choose between these two tasks. Concisely, if the problem could be solved orally, I always preferred to take no action and face the problem myself silently regardless of difficulties.
Along with me, this habit of mine grew up. I started to avoid people as much as I could; I sat alone at the last desk in class, often either reading a book or imagining, and if no one spoke to me, I would not say a single word to anyone. It's as if I've made a shell for myself and lived in that shell, but I didn't have the strength or motivation to break that shell.
Over time I realized that my parents didn't have opportunities to study at a young age; thus, they did everything they could to give me good education: from my childhood, they sent me extra Math and English classes, bought me all the school supplies I needed, gave me money for lunch even there was no food at home for themselves. On top of that, they took additional jobs to pay the tuition fee of my education at the most prestigious school in our region. Therefore, they anticipated the best from me relied on me as the man to get them out of this poverty. To justify my parents' trust, I needed to be someone who could at least make back the efforts they made. To be that person, I had to overcome my shyness first.
Reading books related to public speaking and confidence made no sense to me. Speaking and debate clubs couldn't make any effort, as I was shy even to raise my hand to speak, and they ended after participating five times. I gave up speech lessons after having no money to pay for them.
Then I started preparing for the IELTS exam and learned that the more you speak, the more your speaking abilities increase. Our teacher requested us to speak in English with each other every day and also every week we needed to make a public speech in front of others. Can you imagine anyone who was required to speak a foreign language in front of 15-20 people even though he struggled to express himself in his native language? However, I managed to do it. How?
While I was learning English, I used to watch a lot of Ted Talks since they could help me improve my listening and speaking skills and provide valuable knowledge. After some time, I came across a talk by Amy Cuddy, and the topic was "Your body language may shape who you are." Confidence is something we tend to regard as coming within, but Amy recommends striking superhero-style "power poses" that can give a feeling of self-confidence. Finding out this information, I experimented with it myself, and it worked out very well. I gave a fantastic speech about organizing, planning, and analyzing business in Uzbekistan.
That was the time when I broke my shell and began socializing. I developed a proper perspective: you can learn anything, just it requires time, the appropriate method, and dedication. Discovering this motto, I changed my personality, gained a growth mindset, and developed critical and analytical thinking and eloquence skills. Consequently, now I'm the kid who leads the debate club, the creator of the speaking club, the speaker of TEDxWIUT, and more importantly, now I look straight at issues and find solutions rather than bypassing the problem.