Business School Admissions Essay : Very Personal Questions - Continued

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My mother came from a poor family, but, notwithstanding her excellent grades, her parents pulled her out of school at age 13 to work. Despite her own lack of schooling, she encouraged us to pursue higher learning. One of my most vivid memories of the way she looked out for our interests concerns an episode during which my elementary school teacher labeled me a slow learner. At age eight, I was made to repeat a grade and channeled me into a "special needs" program. Unsatisfied with this "official" diagnosis, my mother began tutoring me herself after school. She soon discovered that, rather than failing to understand the material presented in class, I had already absorbed it, and was thus merely bored. Moreover, the teacher has mistaken my intellectual curiosity and natural inquisitiveness for a failure to understand the concepts that she was teaching. Sticking to her guns, my mother insisted that the administrators return me to the regular class. Having achieved this, she always saw to it that I had access to stimulating material.

My father, who left school at age 14, is a hard-working man. He is easy going and has a dry sense of humor and a gift for imaginative storytelling. Although his peers frowned upon education and couldn't understand why he was working the farm alone while we went off to school, he held a different view. He lavished us with support, and he is still the first to offer encouragement for any venture we pursue.

Although I grew up in a wonderful family, I was also born into a society that was divided along ethnic lines. The fact that I was a Presbyterian in the Republic of Ireland had a major impact on my life. In 1971, the year prior to my birth and just before my country's political troubles exploded, the Republic of Ireland's census recorded a population of just 125,685 Protestants. Within this Protestant community there were a only 16,052 Presbyterians, a mere 0.54 percent of the total population.