A Self-Introduction - Personal Essay

To:                Professor Butter

From:                 Dominic Bevilacqua

Date:                August 30, 2018

Subject:         A Self-Introduction

My Story    

I was born and raised in the New Kensington Pennsylvania area. My parents were natives to the area, my mother being from Turtle Creek and my father was raised in Lower Burrell. My mother had several small careers throughout my upbringing and my father was a construction worker. Growing up my father was not a great father and we have not spoken since he and my mother divorced around 5 years ago. My one and only sibling is my younger brother who is five years younger than me. He is currently working in the oil and gas industry and is following a similar career path that I took. Growing up I was very close with my grandparents who watched me and my brother on most weeknights. They are both deceased at this point but they were exceptional people. My grandmother was house wife but was the sweetest woman who often went out of her way to help others. My grandfather was and still is my role model. He grew up incredibly poor, almost passed away at the age of two due to disease, and lost his sister to the same disease at the age of thirteen and yet none that made him a cynical man. He grew up with an alcoholic father just as my brother and I did but yet he never drank, I had always admired that about him. Once he graduated high school he enlisted in the air force and served as a tail gunner in a B-29 during WW2 and worked his way up to an officer. After leaving the air force he enrolled in University of Pittsburgh and then completed his MBA at Katz.

Throughout my middle school and high school years I was not a good student mainly due to instinctively having an issue with authority which often ended with me spending large amounts of time in detention. In those early teenage years I often had grand ideas for my future but they were always snuffed out by my discouraging father which only gave me more reasons to not make school a priority. My favorite memory of my father was when he said “you’ll never be able to afford college because I am certainly not paying for it.” This is my favorite memory because I am currently a senior who has paid his own through school and will graduate with zero debt and has enough saved to do the same for his MBA.

The main focus in my life from age five to twenty three was martial arts. My upbringing revolved around training rigorously four to six days a week in Tae Kwon Do, which over the years earned me a fourth degree black belt. During my martial arts training I specialized in Kyokushin karate and Russian Sambo, which lead me to spending ten years competing as a kickboxer, six of which were on a professional level. My training laid the foundation for the man who stands here today and the principles learned in that art was the best education anyone could ask for. Martial arts was also what started my love for foreign travel for that most of these competitions were in Europe. Around twenty one years old my training had to slow down due to my career as a union representative which I had been working my way up through since I graduated high school. At the age of twenty three my martial arts training had to stop entirely due to a motorcycle accident which nearly took my life. The injuries from that wreck no longer allowed me to perform at my peak so I decided to leave martial arts all together. This allowed me to focus on my career as a union representative in the pipeline industry. At the age of twenty four I had realized there was no more room for upward growth in my career so the decision was made to start college and begin at WCCC, then transfer to the University of Pittsburgh. The University of Pittsburgh was my first and only choice mainly because my career allowed me to work part time while in school so I needed a local university. Besides CMU, Pitt is the highest rated school in the area and the University of Pittsburgh is also where my grandfather went. Pitt also has a good business program and this was a good fit for me because the plan was to major in finance because I was always good with math and every company needs finance majors.