September 2023, I applied for a scholarship with this small piece of writing. It happened to be an occation to recall one of the most enjoyable types of outcome of exerting leadership. I like the people working together get excited about what they do when all of them are thiking out of the box.
Creative Leadership
Written on:
Leadership Experience
Questions
- Please list a leadership activity in which you have participated.
- List the date of when you participated in the activity. Use month/year format (MM/YYYY).
My Answer
- Legal representative for a small company I founded in Japan
- 06/2008 - 12/2021
Community Contribution
Question
Please describe how you have contributed to improving your community and your specific role in doing so.
My Answer
By believing there is a way to achieve a goal, I evoked every member’s joy in being creative and thinking out of the box. Most often, I was the proposer of new concepts and implementer of them, but they have actively been creators in their own life after seeing me be so. Because they and I were in Japan, where some of the most traditional heritage and culture still exist, what they archived looked petty in the eyes of other countries, but our leaps were not small.
Leadership Manifestation
Question
Leadership manifests itself in many different ways that may be formal or informal. Please list and explain any recent experiences or activities that placed you in a leadership role.
My Answer
I often switch on the video button to show my face in a Zoom meeting earlier than other students to make instructors or speakers feel they are not speaking themselves.
Today, in a discussion group in a class, I helped another student to know what was happening to international students’ brains when it came to understanding people with accents. He is 22 and came here when he was 16 from India. He told his experience at a gas station where he could not understand what people said. I told him that we were not native listeners of English and had not gained the ability to supplement or translate what we heard like someone whose first language was English. I illustrated it by telling my experience in that I could understand Japanese spoken by non-native speakers. I could guess what was said based on my broad experience with the language. We will accumulate enough knowledge to have our brains work that way as we keep listening in English. He looked relieved from anxiety.
Goals and Engines that take you to them
Question
Please describe your short and long term educational goals and how this scholarship will help you achieve them in 250-500 words. This entry is an essential part of your application, please tell the committee how this scholarship will assist you and your educational goals.
My Answer
My short-term educational goal is successfully complete Cybersecurity A.A.S.. And, the long-term one is to obtain a bachelor’s degree in any related areas to DevOps (A software development methodology.) I want to accomplish them as a representative of adult international students who want to realize the American Dream they saw when they were younger.
I left Japan four years ago. It might look strange that I am a freshman at college, but It took a long to get used to English. As the U.S. Department of State classified it, Japanese, my first language, is ‘exceptionally difficult for native English speakers.’ Conversely, English has been difficult for me. Thanks to the money I obtained from my business in Japan, I can cover most of my education and living expenses, but I lead a frugal lifestyle to keep studying.
Recently, I purchased a 2007 Toyota Camry with a mileage of 110,000, costing around eight thousand dollars. However, It has already started showing defects. The air conditioning components seemed unable to keep refrigerant, and I needed to keep recharging it. Also, a few days ago, the steering fluid leaked, and I had to be absent from a class because I needed to have it fixed urgently. If I had had an additional few thousand in the budget, I could have purchased a manufacturer-certified pre-owned car, and it saved me time. If I have more time, I can spend more time studying.
People in my generation and I share our American dream. However, many of us could not come to the United States earlier because of various reasons such as fulfilling family responsibilities and the pressure from social norms.
In Japan, I often used a web service to conduct surveys aimed at people who have an interest in the services I was designing. The company began to be known for its high-quality attendee base. However, the website was in its early stages, and the people who attended my surveys were sometimes the employees operating the website. After speaking with some of them, women slightly younger than me and highly motivated in what they did, I noticed that many of them used to work at financial institutions seen as highly honorable enterprises in Japan. They gave up their stable work and changed their career.
Later, I learned that the company's founder was a woman who studied in the U.S. and was pregnant while doing her master’s degree. Some of the employees are still working for her company. They want to materialize a part of their dreams by working with her. It is certainly an indirect way to do that, but for Japanese women, that is a bold leap.
Now, I think I am representing such humble or seemingly faint people in Japan. Scholarships will not only help me to accomplish my educational goals but also show the will to build trust between The United States and Japan through supporting the generation who once and still sees the American Dream.
Study/Work and Childcare
Question
Can you please describe your situation as a parent with children?
My Answer
I’m from Japan and have a seventeen-year-old son and a five-year-old daughter. Raising a teenager and a small child at the same time is sometimes tricky and sometimes enjoyable. It’s challenging because the teenage period is also a time of change: they change psychologically and physically. We changed the place to live and the language to use too. It’s enjoyable because my son can sometimes act like another father. He can piggyback my daughter, feed her, and brush her teeth.
Sometimes, I wish I could come to the United States earlier because we still struggle to adapt to society and the language. Four years, the time we spent here was merely enough to obtain some level of English, and that’s it. Whenever a problem arises, I have to ask neighbors, watch online video tutorials, and go around for goods. All those things have to be handled while I’m doing class assignments. I’ve never felt that my English is enough to tackle all the new situations and obstacles. I feel my limit, learn new vocabulary, get used to a unique accent, grasp a new concept, and extend my capabilities. The cycle repeats itself.
Sometimes, I think I could withdraw from my college studies and return to Japan because of fatigue. Still, what we’re doing now is what I wanted to do. I want my son to master English and go to college. I also want my daughter to lead a successful life. If I quit what I’m doing now, how do they see me, and what sort of ideas they will grow in their minds? I will be a loser who quit his dream halfway, and they are his son and daughter who lived in the United States for a couple of years and left. I don’t want them to be miserable as children of a loser. This scholarship will help such a man from Japan complete a college education.
Copyright © 2025 Takeo Shimazu