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I realized I had a passion for trading early on in my childhood. My father works as a Financial Advisor, and as a kid, he and I used to compete against each other by picking stocks and comparing their performance over the next year. I didn't beat him very often, but I have a bit of a competitive streak and I loved that our game gave me the chance to earn the respect of someone I looked up to. few people are lucky enough to build careers in a field that they truly love and the ability to work for a company such as BlackRock that lets me engage with my passions for economics and investing for a living would be a fun and rewarding experience. I have a naturally curious personality and tend to dive deep into the subjects in which I am interested. I believe that this aspect of my personality makes me perfectly suited to becoming a professional investor, as I already become effortlessly engrossed in the process of researching the relationships between different markets and individual securities in my free time. Of course, more than curiosity and passion are necessary for becoming a successful investor. I personally believe that those who succeed in this field are best characterized as independent and humble skeptics. If one lacks the humility necessary to admit when they are wrong, they will watch ill-conceived investments drain their capital for far too long before cutting their losses. A successful investor needs to be able to quickly recognize when they have misjudged the market so that they can limit the damage done by any misinformed allocation of capital. Good investors must also be independent thinkers. Oftentimes, by the time a company or investment concept becomes accepted by the general public, the opportunity to realize a meaningful return has already passed. In order to create returns better than that of the average investor, one needs to have the ability to think differently than the herd, which often means searching for opportunities in currently out of favor industries while avoiding those that have been inflated with hype. Lastly, a successful investor must be relentlessly skeptical. Hastily conceived investments are failures, even if they result in a profit. It is not enough to simply believe that a particular security or industry is primed for growth, one must question themselves and test their hypotheses at every step of the research process in order to identify all of the underlying assumptions and potential risk factors relating to their investment concept. If further research regarding what once seemed like a promising investment points to the contrary, one must have the ability to admit that their idea is a bust. Likewise, if evidence relating to a security that an investor passionately dislikes indicates that a profit opportunity exists, the investor must be able to override personal bias in order to make the best decision. As far as off-resume information, I feel that my experience playing under a tough Basketball Coach in high school taught me a great deal about the importance of discipline, humility, and the importance of sacrificing one's own personal desires for the good of the group. My ability to exemplify these traits earned me three MVP awards and a Coaches Award during my high school athletic career. Regrettably, my willingness to dedicate myself to improving in the athletic arena meant that I did not fully understand how exciting subjects like calculus and linear algebra could be when applied to real-world economic scenarios. Fortunately, I have had the opportunity to take graduate-level, quantitative-focused econometrics classes while still an undergraduate student at San Diego State, which has allowed me to fully engage my passions for economics and mathematics. The fun and rewarding nature of these classes has made putting in the required effort to maintain a 3.9 GPA an enjoyable endeavor....