Post your life story in 5 sentances

[SamuelRSmith]

Early years: First born, out of wedlock, parents had no real qualifications to speak of, and extremely poor-paying jobs; early years of my life I didn't see much of my dad, as he had to regularly pull in 6 day weeks and 12 hour days, on top of this, I was born with a few medical conditions (that don't affect me now) so I was in and out of hospital a lot back then.

Over the years, I got 2 brothers, and my dad's career progressed nicely - as a family we moved from working class to being within the UK's "1%"

Never really excelled at school, just coasted my way through to University (first in my family - had to pay my own way), had a bit of a breakdown in second-year, loneliness, days in bed, suicidal thoughts - life turned around when I got an offer to do a year long internship with a bank in Hong Kong.

Loved my job, and life in HK, met my girlfriend, etc, all around fantastic year, bank offered me a full-time-job upon graduation, so long as I hit a certain grade.

Final year of university, worked harder than I've worked in my life - 50 hour weeks, etc, massive turnaround in grade performance, back in HK now, hard work paid off, I'm a top performer, one of the best, and am the subject of internal poaching, etc - I honestly believe that there are very few people out there at my age who have the skillset that I do in my area of knowledge (the bank needs me more than I need them, and that does very well for my pay packet).

Theme of these five sentences (loose definition of the word 'sentences'): work hard and self-improvement. It moved my dad up, it moved me up. Doesn't matter where you start in life, so long as you work hard, realise your flaws and try to improve them, and have a molecule of understanding of how the world works, you can come on leaps and bounds. Not everybody can be the Bransons or Musks of the world, but they can be the Bransons and Musks of their world, and that's what is important.

As an aside, I notice in this thread that there's a lot of people with self-doubts or personal issues. I can be a great person to communicate with, I don't have any professional training, but I can lend a caring ear.