My Autobiography- Dulindra Wijethilake

Personal Statement

Dulindra Wijethilake

University of Colombo School of Computing, Sri Lanka

dulindrawijethilake@gmail.com

Abstract— When I sit back and think about my life and the milestones I have passed, my family background, my education, significant events in my past, the important aspects of my current life, and my future goals, the underlying theme is one of appreciating diversity.

Index Terms— Active, Outgoing, Energetic

I. About me

I was born in a Saturday November 3, 1984, in Kegalle, the second child of Wimala Wijethilake and Herbert Lionel Wijethilake. My parents were both born in Kegalle. My grandmother is a retired Principle. Moreover, the tradition in my father’s family was the amount of hours you put in to studies would yield good results in exams. Hence, my grandmother was not happy with the amount of time I spent on studies. She wants me to study as much as I can. However, according to my grandparents my father was a radical person. He believes that for a child it is important to allocate time for sports and other extracurricular activities as well. Therefore, I was allowed to attend to lot of extracurricular activities and sports. I believe that helped me to be whatever the position that I am now.

I would describe myself as a person who loves to be loved by others. I am an outward person who likes the associate others. I love to travel around the world and to get to know about others cultures and great monuments of their civilization. Getting to know new people has become a norm for me and that has given me the opportunity to have many friends with lot of differences. I have a wide verity of hobbies. I like to play cricket, carom, badminton, tennis. I believe sport is essential for a person to be healthy in both physically and mentally. Another hobby of mine is to read books. I like to read novels, short stories, Adventure and comic books. My favorite books are, Dhammapadaya, Da Vinci Code, Jane Eire, and Sherlock Holmes. I am a nature-loving person. I like to be with the nature and to spend time on places like national parks, botanical gardens, Mountains. I like archeology as well. At some time, if I have to change my currier I would choose to be an archeologist.

II. My Family background

My family is a small family with only two kids. My father and mother both are Ayurvedic doctors. I am the youngest of my family. The only brother I have is 3 years elder than me. He graduated from the University of Peradiniya as a physical science graduate in year 2006. After graduation, he flew Singapore and he started working in a mechanical engineering firm where they built needles for drills. he has being working there till this year and with the recession in the world he had to leave the current job with company finding it difficult to do business and had to be closed. My brother changed his track in to IT industry and now he is working as a software engineer.

III. my educational background

I studied at several schools, which spread around the country. I started my primary education at Ranpokunagama Scheme. There I studied two years and then i went to Kegalle Maha Vidyalaya for about 2 more years. When I was at 5th grade, I went to Embilitpitiy where my parents were at that time. Until that, we were living with a servant and my parents came to see us once in a week. I did well in my 5th grade scholarship so I got the chance to go to a so-called “privileged” school in Colombo. Therefore, I went to Nalanda College. There I studied for another 2 year and I felt that best place to study is near my parents. Therefore, I decided to come back to Embilitpitiy. I did my O/L there. For my A/Ls, I went to Pinnawala National School Rambukkana; near to Kegalle my aunt's place. Reason for my change of schools was my parents traveling. At the same time they travel, we had to travel.

For my O/Ls, we were to sit for 10 subjects where the examinations department decided to include two mathematics papers and two science papers. One subject to remember among them was, English Literature. I did my O/Ls at Embilitpitiy National School. Embilitpitiy known as a remote area among other people even though, I do not agree. Hence, there was some scarcity of teachers. For grade 10 to grade 11, we came across 10 English teachers. The reason for this was that most of the teachers left after completing their initial 5 years of service at a remote school. There were only two students to do English literature; my best friend and me. We have not had a proper literature teacher. Qualified teachers for English subject started teaching English Literature for us. Some teachers were teaching English for the Primary section. Some did not even know what the syllabus is for English Literature. Therefore, during that period we were only playing. However, three months before the exam a new teacher came and fortunately, he was qualified in teaching English literature. After putting some extra efforts, we two managed to acquire some knowledge and exposure to the subject, which gave us "Credit” passes in the exam. This is one of the achievements, which, I am happy.

When it comes to A/L, even though I liked to do science stream, I chose mathematics. Major reason for this selection was my brother. When I spoke to him and to his friends, I got to know that if you follow math stream there are lot of opportunities. Other reason I choose mathematics is that I wanted myself to have time to enjoy life. I felt if I choose to be a doctor I would lose my freedom. Moreover, I would have to be on call every day. Even though I wanted to choose, mathematics in A/Ls I did not had a proper aim to achieve. I only wanted to get good results. However, when I got my results I understood that I was way behind of what I wanted to achieve. Therefore, I had to do the exam for the second time as well. After first shy, my aunt bought me a computer. Computer brought a change in my expectations. I wanted to do computer science at the University of Colombo. However, unfortunately, after the second shy I was short of few marks to achieve my goal to study computer science. However, fortunately, University grants commission has decided to initiate a new course called "ICT". This opened the doors to University of Colombo. Looking back, I think I have taken the correct decision by selecting to do mathematics for A/Ls.

IV. Extracurricular Activities

I would call myself as a person who likes to do sports. I play Cricket, Carom, Badminton and Volleyball. I have being playing cricket from my young age. It was a dream coming true for me when I was selected for the University cricket team. I have represented the University team for three years. Moreover, I like to play carom. I am representing the University of Colombo Carom team. One of the achievements I could was, to win the interfaculty carom tournament last year. Badminton is another sport that I really like. Apart from sports, I like camping, climbing and travelling.

I am a person who likes to make friends and to get to know other people. I have so many friends from all over the country. In addition, I think it is one of my special talents to make friends. One’s ability to adapt in to different situations and to different segments of people is a special talent. Most of people are only capable of associating, moving around with the people that they are usually confident with. They find it difficult to move out of their comfort zone and to work out things. Moreover, in trying to adapt I have seen most have failed. Hence, I believe that I have that special talent to adapt without losing my real values.

One of the weakness that I posses is that I expect others to work like the way I do. Despite of the fact that each person in this world is different and their way of handling a situation is different from others. I am trying to keep that in mind and to give some time for others. The other weakness I am seeing in myself is that I get bored when doing repetitive work. Those are the most significant weaknesses I have noticed in me.

V. University Education

By the time, I was doing my A/L s for the second time I have already decided to do computing. Therefore, with my results my only option to do computing was the BICT course offered by the UCSC. That is why I chose UCSC.

I have not thought about whether to do a fourth year at the start of my degree. Towards the end of third year, I had put some thought about the fourth year. One of the major reasons for that was, we were the first batch to follow this course. Therefore, even at the end of third year, fourth year course modules were not finalized. One of my ambitions is to go for higher studies. Hence, a four-year degree would be a great opportunity.

VI. After Graduation

After graduation, I would like to find an occupation to help the family and at the same time to carry on with my studies. I would like to go abroad and to work while doing my masters. Therefore, just after my graduation I need to do all the necessary undertaking to facilitate my requirement.

After 10 years of my graduation, I would want be in a place where I can be proud of myself. Ten years from now would be a hectic period in my life where, I would want to stretch myself towards carrier success and to improve my skills. After ten years, I want to have enough time to spend with my family and to spend some time in achieving the goals, which I could not achieve during the past years of my life.