Personal Narrative Essay: The Day I Changed My Life

Some memories are best forgotten, but it takes courage to go through them. Often, I wish to forget the day when I almost lost my parents in a tragic car accident. As my world came crumbling down, I prayed and hoped that the nightmare would soon end. I endlessly fought the sense of helplessness, isolation and fear of the uncertainty. I was 19 and clueless. Nevertheless, I sailed through these dreadful days and welcomed my parents home after six long months. In the months that followed my parent’s return, I juggled between taking care of my parents, graduating college and adjusting to my new job. Almost 10 years later, this dark phase still has a phenomenal impact on me. Perhaps, because this specific experience transformed me into a grateful,

Implicitly, my sanity was saved and rooted to finishing my college education. Although, paying the bills were a priority, I was determined to graduate on time. And so, I finished my bachelor’s degree in electronics & information technology, and later earned my master’s degree in computer science, both from Annamalai University. After graduating college, I worked for a customer centric company as a technical customer care executive. I had, imagined working with computers would be an exciting experience, however, troubleshooting was no fun. The job proved to be a double edged sword. Although it was very mechanical, stressful and felt unchallenged, it taught me to be more adaptable, personable and patient under pressure. Due to its routine nature, I often felt my skills and potential were being untapped. Therefore, in pursuance of gaining a holistic perspective of business, I enrolled at the National Institute of Technology (NIT) to earn my business management

I am especially eager to interpret, by means of various multivariate methods, the different relationships between variables and their relevance in solving business challenges. I aim to focus on building analytical models necessary for making smarter decisions. I am, especially, looking forward to understanding social media that needs to be managed, measured and analyzed to respond better to customer behavior in ways not anticipated before. Therefore, I am predominantly fascinated with the discovery of ‘The Tweet Visualizer’ application for sentiment analysis by professor Dr. Christopher Healey. I remain hopeful, that his extensive experience in ‘Visualization’ will help me present meaningful results of the data in a way not overwhelming to the human mind. Also, I am honored to learn that professor Dr. David Dickey is part of the distinguished faculty members. Witnessing and learning statistical concepts from him is nothing short of a dream come true. I strongly believe that the exceptional skills of the faculty members at NCSU will stimulate my multidimensional interests in analytics and the program will engage me intellutually.

Last year, my all-out efforts to explore ‘data analytics’ were abruptly interrupted as a dream, predominantly, due to a life threatening surgery. On my way to a healthy recovery,