During my time in high school, I knew that I wanted to somehow dedicate my life to the service of my country. There is a history of Air Force and Naval service in my family (my family tree goes back to Rear Admiral John. A. Dahlgren, and my great-uncle is an alumnus of the Naval Academy.) I’ve always known that the Naval Academy offers the best way for me to achieve my ambitions of serving as a Naval Officer and of becoming a Naval Aviator and an astronaut.
What has contributed the most to my own character development and personal integrity has been my experience over the last couple of years as a college student. If there is anything that I can say about my character development over the last few years it’s that, I have become a much more
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I re-took a chemistry course this summer that I originally had taken during my first semester of college. I wanted to re-take this course (along with several other courses I’ve taken this summer and this fall term) specifically to improve my GPA and to prove to myself that I could handle the course requirements during Plebe year at the Academy. During the first exam for this class, I was out of town with my family but my professor gave me permission to take the exam online. Before taking this exam my parents said that I should cheat on the exam and that if I didn’t I was naïve. They even tried to argue that most students, even at service academies, cheat on exams. Even though theoretically speaking it would have been very easy to cheat on this test, I maintained my integrity and did not cheat on that exam, or any exam for that matter.
Integrity at its most basic form is doing the right thing even when no one is watching. I have never had any difficulty upholding this value during the course of my life. This example of my chemistry exam is just one tangible way that I can show how highly I hold the value of integrity. If I couldn’t uphold my integrity, I know I wouldn’t be worthy of becoming a Naval Officer because without integrity as an officer I couldn’t be trusted to swear by my own word let alone be trusted with leading