In March 2026, I received admission to the University of British Columbia. Below are the three essays I submitted as part of my application. I'm publishing them here not as advice—I don't know if they're "good" essays—but as a record of what I wrote at twenty, after four years of trying to figure out what I wanted to study and why. The prompts asked three questions: who I am, what matters to me, and what I've learned through work. I answered honestly.
Tell us about who you are. How would your family, friends, and/or members of your community describe you? If possible, please include something about yourself that you are most proud of and why. (Maximum 1500 characters)
My family would describe me as someone who questions what others unreflectively accept-sometimes to my detriment. At fifteen, I picked up Descartes, asking questions grounded in skepticism about how things are ordered. By age sixteen, I left a traditional high school for an online high school programme, which left my father and me arguing for weeks. By eighteen, I left home.
I left in part after reading Michael Sandel's critique of meritocracy. His work made me question assumptions I had not yet examined, namely that hard work alone explained success and that outcomes were determined by choices, not structures. Working in hospitality, I met colleagues from many countries who held professional degrees but did the same work as me. Watching people so capable take jobs far below their training stayed with me.
I am most proud of my determination and drive, and the challenges that have helped shape my thinking. For instance, due to my tattoos, I was rejected at nearly every job interview in Japan. As a result, I incurred a large debt. When I finally found employment, I worked 54 consecutive days to pay down my debt. By the end, this had also reinforced my earlier engagement with Sandel: effort alone is not sufficient. Structure shapes how far effort can reach.
This is what I bring to academic study: a willingness to question and an ability to connect those questions to contemporary issues and lived realities.
What is important to you? And why? (Maximum 1500 characters)
What matters most to me is understanding how individuals face systematically unequal chances-and how institutional design can reduce such gaps.
This question emerged from experience. In London, I worked alongside two groups: international students supported by family resources, and colleagues from India and Eastern Europe whose professional qualifications were dismissed in their new state. Same kitchen. Disparate worlds. At first, it just felt wrong. Only later did I see these as outcomes of how systems classify individuals-not failures of individuals, but failures of design.
A large reason I care about this is that, at 18 years old, entry-level work was my only option. For nearly two years, I lived without financial support from my family. Yet I knew that if I reached a breaking point, I had somewhere to return. When I accepted their support, I learned how access to a safety net shapes how people negotiate constraints and power.
I am interested in institutional mechanics: how policies sort people, how design choices produce exclusion. I study institutions not to dismiss personal responsibility, but to understand how policy can widen the space where effort pays off-and to learn, through Co-op, what that looks like in practice.
Tell us more about ONE or TWO activities that are most important to you. Please explain the role you played and what you learned in the process. You will be asked for a reference who can speak to your response. (Maximum 2100 characters)
At eighteen, I secured a job at a hotel cafe in Okinawa before I arrived-that job was why I initially moved there. I had limited work experience and no local connections. Over two years, I moved through five cities: cooking at Blue Port Cafe, banquet service at Tokyo Marriott, luxury events at W Hotel Osaka, and restaurant service in London.
My responsibilities evolved with each role. At Blue Port Cafe, I arrived early, off the clock, to learn basic cooking techniques. During one shift, a guest collapsed from what appeared to be a serious medical emergency. While a colleague called emergency services, I accompanied him in the ambulance, contacted his American family using his phone, and helped coordinate with hospital staff.
At Tokyo Marriott, I later took on an informal team leader role during high-volume service periods. Across workplaces, this willingness to learn and take responsibility was consistently recognised. That experience showed me that service work requires judgment and cross-cultural communication under pressure, not just routine execution.
What I learned extends beyond hospitality. One colleague had been a talented graphic designer in India. In London, he set tables. I often complained about the gap between my ambitions and my daily tasks. He never did. Every day, he showed up and worked with quiet seriousness. That contrast stayed with me-his persistence made me reconsider what professionalism actually means.
This is why I want to study institutional design: not from textbooks first, but with questions formed beside people whose capabilities were not recognised by the systems they entered. Beyond what I hope to learn, I bring perspectives from having worked alongside people from over twenty countries in high-pressure environments. In discussions of policy design, I can offer grounded observations about how abstract principles play out for real people navigating systems.
A Note on Structure and Agency
These essays emphasize structural determinism—the idea that systems, not individual choices, primarily shape outcomes. This reflects what I was reading at the time (Sandel) and what I observed in London.
But it's not the complete picture.
Structures constrain and enable. They determine how far effort can reach. But within those constraints, individual choice remains real. The colleague who set tables in London chose to show up with dignity every day. I chose to leave home, to work 54 consecutive days, to stop drinking, to apply to university.
Both matter. Structure explains why equal effort produces unequal outcomes. Agency explains what individuals do within the space systems leave them.
I wrote these essays emphasizing structure because individuals are too often blamed for outcomes shaped by design. But I should acknowledge: neither structure nor agency alone explains human outcomes. They interact.
The balance between them is what I'm still learning to understand.
London, April 2026
