Undergraduate Admission Essay - "Happy in a Surprising Way" - First Draft

PROMPT
Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way.

How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?

Hi, thank you very much in advance for your time and comments! I am applying to Loyola Marymount University with the intention to major in Film and Television Production, and look forward to hearing about your experience with the Film and Television industry at your leisure. Please do let me know if any of my word choice is unprofessional, I will be sure to correct it. Wish you a blessed day.

My sophomore year of high school was my first year being one of the Audio/Visual subteam captains. On a particularly mellow evening, when there was not much schoolwork nagging at the back of people's minds and progress in the robotics team was good, I nonchalantly claimed that I would make a robot reveal video and a blooper reel by the end of the year. Although I seemed quite enthusiastic about these ideas, in truth, I was not actually committed to them, and for justified reasons. First off, I made these claims during the remote learning year. I was interacting with people through Zoom, so most of my blooper footage came from there. Zoom screen recordings are capped at a resolution of 720p, and I was very reluctant to use such low-quality resolution for any of my 4k, liquid-crystal-on-a-television-screen videos. The remote learning policy also made it difficult for me to coordinate a robot reveal video, since recording the robot would require a number of people that would exceed the recommended limit for indoor gatherings. I also had my first AP class that year, which was AP Chemistry. The class was not impossibly hard, but the density of the material required me to spend a lot of time reading the textbook. I applied the Pomodoro technique and things became slightly better. Thus, with my limited time and restricted filming capabilities, I felt that a robot reveal and blooper reel would not be doable that year.

That was my belief until the following night.

After another evening robotics Zoom call, I saw my iPhone screen light up with a notification from one of my team's robot-side managers, Sami Muhammad.

"Why are you and Matt literally the coolest AV captains in history," Sami commented.

"Lol wdym?" I replied.

"Blooper video / Robot reveal / Like actually this is epic," Sami pinged in rapid succession.

That was the moment I decided to commit to the projects. Lady Luck was on my side too. Once the winter season ended, my school district switched to a hybrid learning schedule and eased up on COVID-19 policies. I saw my captains in person for the first time, and spent my time with them gathering blooper material. In the first week of March, I released my first blooper reel. It was accepted by an effervescent, encouraging, and empathetic crowd, and since then, I have created four other blooper reels. Later in May, after I finished the AP Chemistry exam, I began planning the robot reveal video with my co-captain. In the pre-production phase, I looked at all the obstacle courses that my team set up for the robot, as well as robot reveals from other robotics teams. Feeling unsatisfied by the lack of camera movement and flamboyance of most of the reveals I saw, and wanting to take advantage of the DJI Ronin-SC gimbal that my team had, I decided to make an ambitious sequence for my robot reveal. Once I narrowed down which setups made the robot move in interesting ways, I watched them on loop for hours, methodically trying enumerated permutations of sequences to figure out a way to stitch them together. It was a few days later that I figured out an ambitious two-shot sequence. My idea was to have the robot start at one side of the course and drive forward until it reached a wooden post. Once it reached the post, it would make a U-turn around the post and come back, but drive around a second post and drive straight afterwards. The camera would lead the robot until it looped around the two posts, and would become static afterwards. Once it was static, the robot would drive past it such that one of the robot's corners would cover the entire height of the frame and sweep from right to left.

From a simple text conversation, my commitment to my robotics team grew ten-fold. The gratitude I felt from being acknowledged by an upperclassman not only increased my commitment, but opened a path for me to explore videography, which was one of my niche interests at the time. With the time I spent on blooper videos and the robot reveal video, I can confidently say that I can provide innovation and motivation to the school that I go to.

The discussion presented is more of overcoming an accidental challenge posed by you and encouraged by someone else. It is not a reference to someone making you happy or thankful. In fact, aside from the almost one liner mention of Sami in the essay, he was totally forgotten for the rest of the presentation. Therefore, his actual influence in making you thankful or happy was lost in the discussion.

Sami needs more participation in the essay since he/she/they/them should be portrayed as the source of your inspiration to fulfill a challenge you made for yourself. There is no reference to being thankful to Sami for inspiring you at the start, and continuing to inspire you to complete the project. The gratitude should come from Sami pushing you to succeed in more ways than just a comment.

There should be a reference as to why you feel both happiness and gratitude for the way Sami influenced the completion of your project. There should be a shared focus on both of you in the essay. What Sami did and how you responded would complete the discussion. Just don't let it be a one liner reference in the statement.