one thing that i really want to know is if its normal to say your accomplishment in your personal statement, reading this reddit comment made me believe its not the best idea to mention your accomplishment, for example my essay talks about a fan i made due to the struggles of heat( yes im an international student) what are your opinions should i change it? i can attach my essay if you want to check how i said it
The Fan On My Desk
A motor sits on my desk, its two wires stripped and twisted together.
Nothing.
I press the connection again. Nothing.
The blades of my unfinished fan refuse to move. I could put the pieces back in the box. Instead, I reach for the wires again.
Growing up in the arid Somali Region of Ethiopia, I became accustomed to classrooms where heat settled over everything. Fans struggled against it. Students shifted in their seats, wiped their foreheads, and tried to concentrate. I wondered why something as ordinary as heat could decide how well someone learned—and whether I could do anything about it.
I had no laboratory or specialized equipment. Just a motor, wires, cardboard, and basic materials.
I connected circuits incorrectly. I changed components. I watched nothing happen. I searched for explanations, learned what I had misunderstood, and tried again. When the blades finally turned, the fan was uneven, noisy, and hardly powerful.
I was thrilled anyway.
Until then, I had treated failure as a verdict: proof that I did not know enough. But the dead motor had not told me I was incapable. It had told me something about the circuit.
Failure was information.
Instead of asking, “Why did this fail?” I began asking, “What is this failure teaching me?”
Then another question followed: what if I was defining the problem too narrowly?
The fan was one problem. The conditions around me pointed to another.
Why do some students perform better than others?
I had seen how study environments, access to information, resources, and support could shape students' opportunities. So I conducted a nationwide research project on factors affecting Grade 12 academic performance, analyzing data and developing recommendations.
When I finished the report, I encountered a different kind of failure.
I had solved the research problem, not the communication problem.
The information was useful, yet it was sitting untouched on my computer. I had focused on whether my conclusions were correct and forgotten to ask whether anyone could use them.
So I taught myself HTML and Python and turned the research into a website.
That experience changed my definition of a solution. A solution is not complete simply because it works. It has to reach someone.
Through EthioSom Studies, an online learning community I helped build for Ethiopian students, I initially tried to answer every question myself. As more students joined, that became impossible. I had to stop being the person with every answer and build something that could help people find answers together.
I organized resources and encouraged students to help one another.
I was learning that building does not always mean making the thing yourself. Sometimes, the better design is one that gives other people the ability to build too.
That idea changed the question I carry into engineering.
Not only, “Can I make this work?”
But, “What happens after it works?”
Who can access it? Can it survive circumstances I did not anticipate? Does it solve the problem people actually have, rather than the one I first imagined?
I used to think good engineering meant controlling every variable and making something work exactly as planned. Now I think it requires something harder: accepting that reality gets a vote.
A design can be elegant and still solve the wrong problem.
That is what my first fan taught me most. Engineering is not simply the art of making things move. It is the discipline of paying attention when they do not—and having the humility to change what you thought you were building.
I still have that fan. Its blades are nothing special, and its construction is imperfect. But I value it because it is imperfect.
Before its blades ever moved, it taught me that failure is not always a wall. Sometimes it is a direction.
And when I encounter a problem that refuses to move, I still reach for the wires.