Zachary Serapin

Professor Jizi
UWRT 1103
November 21, 2015
Me, Myself and I
Who are you? Is probably the most dreaded question on the face of the earth. No one
knows how to respond to it on the spot. Employers will ask it during an interview and they will
get a response like uhh, what do you mean or some other B.S. answer. When someone asks
me that question I want to be able to respond to it with ease. I know what I value, what I am
like, and what I enjoy but summing it up is a tough thing to do. Knowing who you are and what
you believe in is in important part of your life and you should know how to answer that question.
Lucky for me I have a good enough understanding about my life to know how to answer that
question.
Ive been extremely fortunate to have so many amazing people that have helped me grow
as person and become who I am today. Ive never had one overwhelming influence in my life
rather a collection of people who have help contribute to Project Zach. Ive learned so many
important traits and lessons mostly stemming from hard-work, integrity and responsibility that
Ive naturally become someone who encompasses all of these traits and then some.
Unfortunately, Ive not always been someone I was proud of. Most of my middle school years
and the beginning of high school I tried to be someone I wasnt and fit in with the crowd. This
meant I abandoned most of the character traits I value most. I completely disregarded my
responsibility, respect and integrity just to fit in with my peers.

There wasnt a single event that really changed my life and made me who I am today. It
was more of time period where everything just kind of clicked. Heading in to my Sophomore
year of high school I began to take to heart and really put into action all of the lessons and values
people taught me over the course of my life. At the beginning of school soccer season in the fall
I was elected as captain of the JV team by my teammates. It was the first time I was chosen as a
captain for one of my soccer teams and I found it extremely gratifying because it showed I was
starting to become the person I aspired to be. The experience of being The Captain also gave
me the opportunity to build leadership skills and really grow into my own. Later on in the
spring of my sophomore year I was once again elected as captain this time for my club team. I
felt this was more of an achievement because, I did not know any of my teammates going into
the season. I was able to make a good impression both as a leader and a friend to all of these
people I just met by being myself. After that I really gained confidence in my self and who I
was. This confidence began to translate this into the rest of my life. I began to develop really
close relationships with a variety of people. I also took active leadership roles in a couple
different youth groups, raised my grades and improved as an athlete.
The reason I began to change in such a positive way is because, I put my beliefs and
values before the beliefs of others. The thing I value the most is my integrity. No matter who I
become in life I always will keep my integrity. I always strive to the right thing and be
accountable for the actions I take. The desire I have to keep my integrity dictates my actions and
how I carry myself. Many other things are important to me like friendships, close relationships,
Family, and there are things I want to get out of life like happiness, adventure, pleasure, financial
security, etc. I value and want to have all of these things but, my integrity is the only one I could
not live without. I just find so overwhelmingly important because, it has helped me so much

throughout my life to make good decisions and accomplish all of the great things I have done so
far with my life. It will also continue to help me make wise decisions and succeed in the next
four years of my college career. As I have stated before a lot of people have made positive
contributions to my life, but my parents without a doubt contributed the most to my strong belief
in good integrity. They started to implement the building blocks for this belief from such an
early age by doing an excellent job of teaching me right from wrong. And as I grew older they
continued to teach me great life lessons which allowed me to continue to develop as a good
human being. As I continue to grow and develop, my values will develop with me. I have
already noticed a couple of values that use to be important to me no longer matter as much as
they use to and have been replaced with other things that are more important and relevant to me
now. This trend will continue throughout my life as I grow older and different things come and
go from my life.
Many of my values tie into my beliefs because they are quite similar. Most of my beliefs
today have been developed from my countless experiences with people and events but, some of
my biggest beliefs steam from the teachings of my parents. Something I do no matter where I
am, is to treat everyone with basic respect. I always have been honest with people and have
respected their beliefs. Ive always been puzzled with the fact that there are people who are
being treated poorly because their beliefs or appearance is different than yours. If more people
believed in this, I have no doubt in my mind the world would be a better place to live. Another
thing I am big on is giving my all into to everything I do. I used to be one of those guys who
didnt care about anything and put in the least amount of work to get by. I received the you
need to start caring about your work speech thousands of times from my parents and teachers
but, it never really stuck. I was always a hard worker in soccer and put in effort to things I cared

about but, I never applied myself as much as I could have in school. One day in school one of
my teachers did not return an essay back to me. I asked him why he didnt hand me back my
assignment and he told me I did not turn it in. This initially puzzled me because, I turned in the
work. He then told me I dont grade any assignments that are turned in without effort. This is
when I finally began to take the you need to always try your best thing seriously. I started to
realize that nothing in this world is worth doing if you arent going to give 110% doing it. Now I
always try to put my best foot forward and have a smile on face no matter what I am doing.
I think a lot of my values and beliefs correlate well to some of my character traits. I
know I am responsible, honest, hard working and fair. This maybe why I value things like
integrity and a strong work ethic so highly. To understand my top character traits, I took the VIA
character survey as part as a class assignment. After taking survey I found that leadership was
my strongest character trait. At first I was a little puzzled by the result. I then began to look
deeper into my results and began to notice that a lot of my other top character traits were all traits
you look for in a great leader. They included integrity, fairness, teamwork, honesty and
authenticity. In my opinion all of these traits truly reflect my personality. Throughout the years
of playing soccer I always tried to be the leader of the team by working hard, being a great
teammate and being able to take charge of situations. Throughout my soccer career Ive had
many coaches that taught me a lot of good leadership skills and encouraged me to take charge
and lead. I have always been the person my friends look to when tough situations come up. Ive
always been good at a decision making and with my other character traits I have been able to
flourish in leadership roles.
At first I thought it would be impossible to write this much about myself. Luckily it
wasnt as difficult as I thought is would be and by writing this essay about myself, my values and

my beliefs I have been able to take a good look at myself in the mirror and truly understand who
I really am. Ive always had a pretty good understanding of who I am and what I value. This
assignment gave me the opportunity to dig a little deeper into my life and re-affirm my beliefs.
The assignment also gave me an opportunity to write about myself because, it isnt often I get to
write this much about myself and it was quite enjoyable. I did not really learn much more about
myself than I already knew but, I found it useful to write about my certain events and how I
developed my beliefs. And the next time someone asks me describe myself you bet Ill know
what to say.