Personal Narrative: My Top Five Strengths

Strengths Finder 2.0, an online test that proposes to find your talents best suited for development. Another personality test in a sea of others, Strengths Finder does little to distinguish itself. Through poor wording, ambiguity, and no fact checks available, Strengths

What made me the person that I am today? My mother plays a big role on this topic. I have developed into a smart, hardworking young lady because my mom has never stopped pushing me to be a better person. I learned at a young age how to work for everything that I have now. This includes getting a job at age 16. If it wasn’t for my mother, I would have never attended college. If it wasn’t for my mother raising the twenty-year old lady I am today, I would not know how to get through the life successfully. I am independent because of my mother. As a matter of fact, the name “Emily” means industrious and striving. I take pride in these characteristics because they describe me perfectly. I grew up with my family in Houston, Texas but I settled in

Strengths Finder 2.0 uses an online assessment to evaluate the individuals unique talents by having the taker rate how they view a particular question in 20 seconds or less (Rath, 2007). After taking the assessment, my five strengths were determined to be achiever, maximizer, input, arranger, and

Based on the Clifton Strengths Assessment my top five strengths are strategic, deliberative, learner, maximize and individualization. As an individual, I rarely look into my weakness. I believe that when your too focused on your weakness, you forget about your strengths. Everything the book said is true, and we need to take the time to look at our strengths and make it perfect. It is true that in this world or the school system, we are taught to look at our weakness and correct it so that we can become stronger in our life. This book brings out the truth that I longed to hear for a long time. Invariably, I hear my professor tell their students that for them success in life, they must practice and look at our weakness. This book proves it wrong because for us to become successful, we must stay to our strengths’ path.

Tom Rath’s “Strengths Finder 2.0” on-line assessment identified that my top five strengths are: Strategic, Focus, Futuristic, Significance, and Learner. I see the Strength Finder Assessment as a great opportunity to get to know my personal strengths and it motivates me to work and practice my talents rather than trying to fix my weaknesses. Looking only at my strengths is a new type of skills-building which allows me to stay focus on my talents.

These strengths include organization, participation, and creation of checklists. I feel I stay very organized in this class, as I have all of my documents organized inside my binder ready for a notebook check. In regards to participation, I try my best to raise my hand nearly every class. I stay active and focused so that I can obtain all of the information. I also ask questions frequently which helps me to avoid mistakes or any confusion. My final strength, the fact that I create checklists, has benefitted me immensely. Checklists help to make sure all requirements are met for any project or essay, which is how I received a 91 on my Pilgrim Presentation and an 85 on my Canterbury Tales Short Essay. Checklists have helped me to score higher on assignments with multiple requirements, but not all assignments were as simple as creating a

My top strength identified was the Achiever theme. Achiever describes the need for constant achievement. Achievers have the capacity and the drive to keep taking on new challenges and strive toward new goals (Rath, 2007). This description is accurate in that I enjoy a new challenge and like to keep busy working towards anything with some sort of successful outcome. I welcome the opportunity to do something better, more perfectly, or more complete which motivates me to a higher level (Rath, 2007).

Gallup’s (2017) StrengthsQuest assessment lists my five greatest strengths as competition, achiever, learner, input, and strategic. After reviewing the detailed descriptions of these strengths, I am confident that I can successfully apply these skills to my job as an investigator and further develop my capacity in leadership. Before taking this survey, I was certain that focus would be among my five greatest strengths, but after considering the book’s description of the achiever theme, I am convinced of the accuracy of this evaluation. Outlined below is my interpretation of these talents, their intrinsic drawbacks, and several illustrations of how they have helped me achieve success. I have also included a few examples of how I can implement

The Clifton Strength assessment I took listed my top five talent themes as Responsibility, Achiever, Learner, Focus, and Connectedness. Three of these top five fit into the executing domain; Responsibility, Achiever, and Focus. They deal with working hard and getting the job done. My strategic domain is as a Learner; this skill allows me to think outside of the box and tailor the approach to the specific situation. The fifth theme, Connectedness falls into the relationship-building domain. This is the strength that I feel is most important in my life and would like to continue to develop it throughout my entire life. It is the summation of all aspects and who I strive to be.

When I mastered the twelve scales on my alto saxophone, it taught me the challenges I could face later in the music business. Learning scales can be a difficult feat, it takes months of practice hours of dedication to learn over thirty different finger placement and techniques for dexterity and agility. Furthermore, over the span of three months, I would stay after school three times a week to further increase my technique in playing scales. I remember one time, after practicing for over 1 hour, being frustrated because I couldn’t play the scales at a steady pace and my lip was hurting.I bailed out that day and accepted defeat.That same night when I arrived home, I felt ashamed and sheepish not because I couldn’t play the scales, but because I gave in and gave up.

In my first semester in College, a summer semester, I did not do as well as I wanted to but I made up my mind that I will have A’s in all my other classes, and I have been able to achieve my goal so far. I am determined and I think that is the most important trait that has been helping me in my education, and that will help me in my future career. Just as determination made Edison keep trying after many failures, it keeps me focused and able to tackle challenges that I face in my academics and in pursuing my career. I want to become a doctor. Though, I know getting into medical school is highly competitive and challenging to go through, I am resolute.

I believe my attributes that I have possessed over the years are the ability for me to look beyond a person’s limitations and try not to past judgment. As a person who is nurture to everyone and one who strongly believes that everyone is important no matter their physical appearance, age, gender, sexual orientation, religion, class, and race no one is neither weak or inferior to me. I believe it is important to everyone to feel love and appreciate regardless of their limitations.

That is, until I was nine and fainted at the sight of my own blood when I cut my finger.

When it comes to who I am in my career, a few of my strengths shine through more than others. For example, I put everything I have in to my work and into my career, and looking back at how I’ve worked in the past compared to now, I see my strengths restorative and developer.

In class there was a survey we had to take that would tell us about our  top 5 strengths. Even though the test was very long I was able to learn alot about myself. The top five strengths that were given to me are futurististic, deliberative, significance, achiever, and responibility. Out of those five I chose three because those are the strengths that resembles me the most. My first strength was futuristic, in the strengthsquest quiz it was very accurate because  I am the type of person who always think about the future. Since a young child I always would think ahead of the years , months and days which I will always strive to meet them. Everything I do is for a positive outcome , I sometimes think about the future so much I start to hold myself accountable at a high rate on and off the court, On the basketball court I give it my all because I have big goals to be a professional and the only person who can stop me is me, so i refuse to have a setback because knowing I didn't take care of business and that’s putting me a step behind to reach my goals.