Leadership Roles and Activities - Essay Example

?Please list your leadership positions, activities, or conferences you’ve attended in their order of importance to you. Use the space available to provide a concise description of the activity. 1) I assist as a math peer tutor at the Worcester Academy. My responsibilities include helping students with their homework and explaining important math concepts to them. Over time many of the students have become my friends, so I am able to relate to them in a positive way and assist wherever I can. I do not teach any material. I only help them go over the lessons that they have received in class, and then I try to explain it to them in an easier way. After this I work with them on their math problems and give them some pointers. 2) I am also a math manager and member at the Worcester Academy. This role is slightly different from that of a tutor because I compete with some of my fellow peers in nationwide math competitions. Over the years I have attended math competitions such as MML, WOCOMAL, and even the prestigious HMNT, which is a Harvard run math competition. Before my team and I go to competitions, we put in many hours of hard study and practice with questions that are likely to come up in competition. For the latest national competition that we entered, our team came in third place. 3) Another role that I have is with the badminton club, where I have the dual role of co-founder and captain. Although there was already some badminton clubs in the same area, many of them were segregated in terms of race or ethnicity. Before I began the club, I saw that badminton players of different cultures rarely mixed together except when competing against each other, so I wanted to do something about that. My club has a wide mix of international students and Americans who learn to have fun while playing badminton and also develop great friendships off the court. 4) I am also a member of a Destination Imagination team, where students have to use their creative talents to create successful ventures. There are many new challenges each semester, and the students have to learn how to work together to achieve a shared goal. Last year there was a competition where our team had the challenge of creating a movie trailer with limited production costs ($200). Our creative abilities helped stretch this budget through the use of recycled products as props. Although we only had limited resources and funds, as a team we were able to come up with a successful end product. 5) Another great activity of mine is playing on the soccer team at Concord Christian Academy. Although I had only played the sport a little before I joined the team, my primary reason for doing so was to become friends with American students and practice my English speaking and listening abilities. Before I was on the team, I did not really get the chance to mix with Americans. As an added bonus, my skill level improved relatively quickly and I became a starter. This helped me to improve my English even further because the rest of the team accepted me as a real player on the team. I put down my knowledge of the English language to being able to get along with native speakers in a fun setting. 6) One of my greatest leadership roles is acting as a proctor. This role entails great responsibility and it has helped me to develop great leadership skills. Part of my responsibilities is to supervise students during studies and make sure that they stay focused on their work. This role has also helped to develop my self-confidence because I have gained respect from many of the students. Further responsibilities include organizing the dorm room that I sleep in, and decorating the wall to make the dorm welcoming for any new student. Organizing dorm championships has helped to build camaraderie among the dorm members and helped them to develop lasting friendships beyond the dorm. 7) I also have volunteering experience working as a dental assistant. The head dentist is my mother’s friend. This role is not a paid position, although the experience that I have gained has been invaluable. I had only ever sat in the patient’s chair at a dental clinic before, so it was a new experience to sit there and watch patients go through their ordeals. The first few days I spent there I was only tasked with organizing and cleaning the room, but the dentist let me sit in on some of the treatments if the patients agreed to it. The University of the Pacific has a long history of producing dynamic graduates who are leaders in their communities and careers. Please describe below a 500 words or less essay describing a time when you made a difference as a leader. What happened and what difference did you make? There have been many times during my life when I have made a difference as a leader. I do not feel that I am a natural leader, but I have some good leadership qualities such as compassion and responsibility that are useful when managing a large group of people. My time working with my Destination Imagination team has helped to improve my leadership skills greatly. Before I joined the team, I was a little unsure about what my role would be. The team needed to be creative to overcome different sets of challenges, but I did not feel that I was a very creative person at that time. The way that the team was structured meant that there was not one particular leader at all times; it was more of a group effort, but there were times when one or two team members needed to take the lead so that we could be successful as a group. One such time was when the team had to come up with a product that would be affordable and useful for poorer people to buy and use. My team could not really come up with anything, so I suggested the idea of using old metal scraps to make cheap and inexpensive bicycles. The rest of my team was not so keen on the idea because of all the effort that would be required, but because they could not come up with anything better, that is the option that we decided to choose. Because I was the one who came up with the idea in the first place, I had to take responsibility and organize the project. The first thing I did was to go down to the local metal scrap yard and to see if they would have any spare metal available. One of their representatives told me that I could not take any metal away, but after checking with his supervisor he said that I could as long as I paid for it. My team only had limited funds and we could not really afford to spend large amounts of money on scrap metal, so I told the owner about the team project that we were doing for Destination Imagination, and he agreed to let us use a small amount of metal for our project. Once we had the metal, I had to organize the members of my team into different roles so that we could complete our task efficiently. It turned out that one of my team members had a cousin who worked as a metalworker, so he offered to help design the bicycles for us. I assigned roles for the rest of my group members, such as advertising and accounting/sales. My role was to ensure that everything ran smoothly and all the other team members had to report back to me. I did not volunteer to take the leadership role on this project, but because it was my idea, I had to be the one to organize everything. Read More