What is a good way to prepare for the likely request, “tell me about yourself”? asking a friend to write a paragraph about you and memorizing that cataloging your successes and finding examples that highlight relevant skills surveying your teachers and using their descriptions to write a speech showing them you can "think on your feet" by not preparing anything

cataloging your successes and finding examples that highlight relevant skills

Explanation:

"asking a friend to write a paragraph" might be a good idea, but not when it's about just memorizing that paragraph. it is a limited point of view that won't say much about you. Same goes to "surveying your teachers". When it comes to "showing them you can "think on your feet" by not preparing anything", although it might be great to show that you're a great communicator, even great communicators have to have domain over the subject to be discussed or talked about and you have to do some preparations beforehand. So, gathering information and cataloging things about you is a great way to know and remember what to talk about when you need to.

The main theme in Emerson's essay on Self Reliance is Individualism. the philophy that emphazises the moral worth of the individual. In it, Emerson urges his readers to be self-suficient, not to follow blindly doctrines but their inner moral compass. He makes the point that a man, in order to be a full being, needs but himself, and sometimes away from society. This can be read along the lines: A man is to carry himself  in the presence of all opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he.

The textual evidence to support how Emerson's views of individualism relate to ideas of Transcendentalism can be read in the following lines: He who would gather immortal palms must not be hinderted by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. This idea alone is the basis of Transcendentalism, the belief that each person, individually,  has to find an original relation to the universe.