<p>Q) You are about to write your future college room mate a letter. Please provide the room mate with a personal story that will give him/her some insight into your personality.
The word limit was 5000 characters.This is around 4400.</p>
<p>Dear ABC</p>
<p>My name is XYZ and I'll be your room mate next year. As a future room mate you should know more about me. I'll tell you about a friend of mine who has influenced my personality and made me a better human. I hope you'll have a fair idea about my personality after reading this letter.</p>
<p>I had many friends in school. One of them was Anurag. We had nicknamed him Rags ( nice name, isn't it?). Rags was the quintessential average guy. He was the jack of all trades but the master of none. One day, we had to jump hurdles in our physical education class. Most of the students, including me, soon gave up ( gosh! Athletes make it look so easy in the Olympics),but not Rags. Everyone ridiculed his efforts, but he was unruffled by the mockery. At the end of the class, he was the only one who had successfully jumped over all the hurdles. Later in class, I asked Rags about how he coped with all the ridicule that he faced on the field. He told me that initially, he felt demoralized, but he concentrated on the task at hand and turned a deaf ear to the mockery. This incident made me realize that to be successful you had to concentrate on your job and forget about the people who were trying to bring you down. Rags had unknowingly taught me a life lesson.</p>
<p>Nearly an year after this incident, Rags was at it again. This time he didn't do anything, rather something happened to him. He was taken ill. Doctors said that he had contracted Dengue Fever and that his blood platelet count was decreasing by the day. As I write this essay, nearly two years later, I still find it difficult to accept the fact that he would have died had his blood platelet count dropped any lower. I visited him in the hospital at that time. The scene in his room was quite different than what I had expected, and honestly, I couldn't have,in my wildest dreams imagined the look on his face. He was propped up with pillows and was watching TV, as if nothing was wrong and he just had a bad case of flu. He beamed at me and asked me about my health.That, was too much for me (I mean, the guy was dying, and he was asking me, about my health). I looked at him incredulously and asked," Aren't you afraid?" He replied casually," If I die, I die. It's no use getting worried about it." His reply awed me. After that day, whenever I faced a problem that made me feel stressed and worried, I thought about my dear friend, who didn't seem to think that the fact that he was dying was something to worry about. Thinking about him gave me the strength to plow on and overcome all the problems that life threw at me.</p>
<p>Visiting Rags in the hospital made me understand the importance of living life to the fullest. I understood that the only way to avoid regret in life was to live each day as if there was no tomorrow. I also learned that sometimes life tends to be unfair, but that is just the way it is, and instead of complaining, it was better just to get on with life.</p>
<p>You must be wondering what happened to Rags. Well,in the end, he turned out to be all right.After being discharged from the hospital, he often joked about his near death experience saying,"It'll take more than a mosquito bite to kill me."(Crazy sense of humour! Right?)</p>
<p>Rags was unabashedly himself,always. He was never ashamed of his shortcomings and neither attempted to hide them. He was never afraid of what people might say about him. He made me realize, that it was better to be who I was, than to pretend to be someone else. He made me realize that there were too many people in this world who were trying to imitate others. Some people wanted to be like their dads, some like their teachers, some like their friends and some like their idols. They forgot the fact that to be successful all they needed was to be themselves. Rags taught me the value of being unique.He also taught me to celebrate this uniqueness instead of trying to hide it from the world.</p>
<p>Rags was just an average boy, but the way he carried himself, with an air of confidence and dignity, made him special. He was, and still is one of the most influential person in my life. I can confidently say that I have learned much about life by observing him and I'll never forget what I have learned from him until my last breath.</p>
<p>I hope that you found the letter interesting and weren't bored. I look forward to getting to know you. See you at Georgia Tech.</p>
<p>Sincerely,
XYZ</p>
<p>Any suggestions or recommendations are welcome.Thanks.</p>