When I first started at the University, I felt strongly that learning was important to my growth and development; in fact, I have felt this way for as long as I can remember. I feel that I can learn basically anything, and that limitations on my learning pose limitations on what I can do in life. If I open myself up to learning and give myself to my studies, it is like fueling my potential. I feel that learning increases my options and gives me the means to respond to diverse opportunities as they might arise. My perspective when I first started was that since I was not yet completely sure what I wanted to do with my life, I wanted to keep my options open by learning about many different disciplines. In observing how many students who graduated ahead of me have had to adapt to a rapidly changing business environment, I am reassured that I did the right thing in pursuing my education this way. One can never tell when it will be necessary to suddenly shift gears and proceed in a new direction, and a diverse background of knowledge is good preparation for that. I did want to pursue a major course of study, and of course I needed to select a major anyway, but I tried to select courses outside my major with a view to learning new thingsùin some cases even without the necessary prerequisites, which is not necessarily a course I would recommend to everyone.
My level of professional competence in problem solving was relatively low in the beginning. Actually, having not had many experiences up to then, I was a true neophyte in many respects and looking for a way to increase my knowledge and understanding or problem solving. Although I did well with logic in the abstract sense, trying to solve actual problems was not as straightforward. My written communication skills were good, but they needed a lot of honing. I was quite interested in developing my writing skills, because I enjoyed writing and also because I knew it was a necess...