How education has defined me as a human being?

I have always been the kind of person that is passionate about studying and who wanted to accumulate as much knowledge as possible in different domains, in order to develop different and useful skills.

As Nelson Mandela once said "Education is the most powerful weapon that humans can use to change the world". I think that education is indeed the weapon, but the bullets, on the other hand, are tiny “lessons” of ethics, that can leave a big wound on the human body.

I obtained two A level bachelor degrees simultaneously while living in Romania and then moved to Belgium where I graduated a Msc ranked 180 top international and an MBA online while on scolarship. Apart from that, I am also an alumna of a summer school with teachers from Ivy League universities and then went to The United Nations headquarters as part of a MUN committee, one month after Obama and other world leaders had sat in the same room, negotiating nuclear agreements.

So how does that define me as a person?

One lesson that my mother has always taught me was not to aim to be the best in the class, but to be in the top 10. I ended up in the top 5. As Michelle Obama was mentioning in her documentary, we should not aim in life to become only stats. We need to be more than a number, and I strongly believe in that. 

Cesare Lombroso, the father of antrpology criminology, believed that criminality is inherited and criminals can be identified by specific physical traits. On the other hand, Cesare Becarria stated that free will is what determines people to make choices. But as Lombroso was studying mainly the temperament, which is biologically inherited, Becarria was more focused on the character.

To conclude, I believe that education has had a big impact on my personal development and has been a critical tool in developing great knowledge and skills such as adaptability, teamwork, public speaking etc. Also, I consider that education has left a big mark on my personality and helped me answer a very important question that defined who I am today:

I understood that I should become who I want to be and not who I am “supposed” to be.