Running head: PERSONAL ESSAY PERSONAL ESSAY Personal essay Name Institution Course Date My mother is the most influential person in my life. It took most of my teenage years to realize finally that my mom molded me to be who I am today. Despite being a career woman, she always had time for us and never failed in her role as a mother. She is that kind that would always insist and ensure that we spend quality time together as a family; she is the family’s backbone and nice and also displayed her generosity character to other kids in the neighborhood especially in academics. She multi-tasked the duties as a mother, friend, teacher, and my role model in my teenage years. Considering her position as a role model and a mother, it reminds me of Charlotte Bronte's Villette quote, “also, she provided to me her original character of studying, certain virtues, admiring passion power and her feelings to trust.”My mother’s character was displayed in her virtues of self-sacrifice and dedication as a wife, mother and career woman. She evidently portrays her true principles by believing in us despite the hardship and difficulties surrounding us as children. Each of us is given a particular attention by creating time to listen to each of us and also helped me to go through the teenage process especially in choosing friends. Despite this, she kept encouraging me and assured me that everything will be ok.Her virtues were extended to a neighbors’ child who had been neglected and needed special attention due to her difficulty in following the school curriculum and speech difficulty. In spite of this, mother always believed that she will recover from those setbacks. Most time, she dedicated herself to educating her and attending therapy classes to help her. She did all these without complaining even once and always sacrificed her free time to help her. I admire her ability to take care of the poor girl and us and have always been there for me despite her tight schedule and more so her never ending love for every person she interacts with. Just as John Stuart Mill stated in his quote, to love your neighbor as you love yourself constitutes an ideal perfection of utilitarian morality. And finally just like Aristotle, happiness will always lie in a virtuous activity, and there is more happiness in the best activity done which must be contemplative. My mother is so influential in my life and also acts as my role model. References Oldham, J., & Morris, L. B. (2012). The new personality self-portrait: Why you think, work, love and act the way you do. Bantam. Schultz, D., & Schultz, S. (2012). Theories of personality. Cengage Learning. .