Niko Partida Personal Statement September 12, 2013

Hello, my name is Niko Partida and I am a student currently attending Atwater High School. I am of hispanic decent and I was raised under christian morals and beliefs. I was raised in the big city of Los Angeles, but more specifically, South Central. After my fathers passing, I moved to central california with my mother. My mother was born and raised in Mexico and my Father was born and raised in southern California. I have learned to do plenty of things on my own due to lessons learned in my classes and sports I have chosen to participate in. I learned how to become selfdisciplined due to realizing that nobody else is really going to push me to succeed or excel unless I take the initiative to do it myself. Another factor that helped me shape my academic career is my cousins academic accomplishments, challenging me to do my best because of a simple family rivalry. He is currently attending CSU Cal Poly Pomona and majoring in Engineering. All these factors helped me achieve a great amount of the goals I have accomplished during my high school years. I have many aspirations in my educational career and I am planning to pursue a career in the medical field as a Advance Practitioner Registered Nurse. Right now I am leaning towards CSU Fresno to major in cellular biology or biomedical sciences. So far what I have done in my high school career to prepare myself to achieve these goals are my grades and taking care of my grade point average. I currently have a 4.0 this semester and last year I had a 3.49. I try to reach for the best like my grades and this is how I show that I am disciplined and self-motivated to succeed. What motivated me to go into this field is me living in the central valley for seven years now and also I have fun helping others in my family and community take care of so I believe it will be an interesting field to go into. Also it is one of the most interesting careers that Ive looked into. One of the events that made me push myself harder was my cousin Jaime getting accepted to Cal Poly University and this showed me that I should try harder because it can be done. It also showed me that my education revolves around me and the only one that should be worrying about it is me. Another circumstance that made me want to keep pursuing my education at the college level is that my parents never attended. My father only achieved high school and my mother only went through grade school due to lack of funds and Mexico charges for education unlike the United States. Even though I am an athlete who excelled in football I know I am not going to college off sports so I try to push myself harder in my academic achievements so they can be irresistible to Universities.