Hello I live in Canada and am applying for USA colleges as a senior student.
My English skill is not great (since I am not native English-speaking), so it would be great if I can get any suggestions and helps.
I tried my best to write a piece that represents a significant experience, but I do not think the essay conveys my idea as I intended. I really want to write my experience as a leader in my computer science class team and why it did not work well. I would like to write how the experience made me think of the hardship of being a "leader" and made me become a better leader. Any help will be really a great help.
Here it is:
Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
Being a Leader
If you were ever a group leader, you probably would know the hardship when managing the group members to do their parts of the group work. Many groups, especially for school assignments, usually consist of half idle members and half diligent members. Some do not care of their grades in classes, but some do have high expectations. Some are not interested in accomplishing their work as a member, but some are willing to finish not only their own parts, but also other members' if necessary. Because of members with ranging passions, a competent group leader is vital for a successful completion of a group work.
I had a dream of becoming a leader of a software team that develops amazing, attractive software that benefits billions of people around the world. I thought it would be really fun to cooperate with brilliant developers and designers to make great computer software like StarCraft, OS's, and Microsoft Office. To reach closer to my dream, I had wished to have experiences as a leader in a software development team. Last semester of my high school, I fast-tracked grade 12 computer science course. On the first day of the class, fortunately, my teacher, who was a fan of group work, divided the class into four teams and selected team leaders who are going to be in charge of the teams. I volunteered for the position excitingly, but without knowing, "with great power, come great responsibility." We worked on many assignments ranging from a small-sized white box testing to a large-scaled game development. On small projects, which could be done in a day, our group did a great job. However, when it came to a large-sized project, I felt disappointed of myself: I could not manage team members efficiently. We had to develop Blackjack game with a graphical user interface using OOP (Object-Oriented Programming) paradigm. We divided the whole game into small components: Player, Card, GUI, and many other necessary classes for the game. Then after discussing details, we distributed each component to each member. As we did not have much time during school, we met after school to check what we did on a daily base. On the first meeting after school, however, some of the member did not work on their parts and some even did not start. Also there were members who did not have basics programming skills. The most crucial problem was that many members did not follow the UML (Unified Modeling Language) diagram that we created to design the details; our source codes were not compatible to each other's. With many problems, our project ended to be unsuccessful and produced an incomplete piece of Blackjack game.
Thinking back to the experience, I think my team could do better if I was a better leader. If I examined the ability of each member before assigning their parts, I could find out members who have weak skills. I could assist them to learn what they need and I could make them join school's computer science club to increase their skill. Also I had to find out their strength so that I could distribute works efficiently. For the idle members, I had to seriously talk about their problems individually instead of giving up. Finally I could use developing tools such as Gantt Chart to manage the schedule and Google docs to share documents. I believe this experience, although unsuccessful, will be a variable nutrient for me to be a better leader and it will assist me to make my dream a reality.
My English skill is not great (since I am not native English-speaking), so it would be great if I can get any suggestions and helps.
I tried my best to write a piece that represents a significant experience, but I do not think the essay conveys my idea as I intended. I really want to write my experience as a leader in my computer science class team and why it did not work well. I would like to write how the experience made me think of the hardship of being a "leader" and made me become a better leader. Any help will be really a great help.
Here it is:
Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
Being a Leader
If you were ever a group leader, you probably would know the hardship when managing the group members to do their parts of the group work. Many groups, especially for school assignments, usually consist of half idle members and half diligent members. Some do not care of their grades in classes, but some do have high expectations. Some are not interested in accomplishing their work as a member, but some are willing to finish not only their own parts, but also other members' if necessary. Because of members with ranging passions, a competent group leader is vital for a successful completion of a group work.
I had a dream of becoming a leader of a software team that develops amazing, attractive software that benefits billions of people around the world. I thought it would be really fun to cooperate with brilliant developers and designers to make great computer software like StarCraft, OS's, and Microsoft Office. To reach closer to my dream, I had wished to have experiences as a leader in a software development team. Last semester of my high school, I fast-tracked grade 12 computer science course. On the first day of the class, fortunately, my teacher, who was a fan of group work, divided the class into four teams and selected team leaders who are going to be in charge of the teams. I volunteered for the position excitingly, but without knowing, "with great power, come great responsibility." We worked on many assignments ranging from a small-sized white box testing to a large-scaled game development. On small projects, which could be done in a day, our group did a great job. However, when it came to a large-sized project, I felt disappointed of myself: I could not manage team members efficiently. We had to develop Blackjack game with a graphical user interface using OOP (Object-Oriented Programming) paradigm. We divided the whole game into small components: Player, Card, GUI, and many other necessary classes for the game. Then after discussing details, we distributed each component to each member. As we did not have much time during school, we met after school to check what we did on a daily base. On the first meeting after school, however, some of the member did not work on their parts and some even did not start. Also there were members who did not have basics programming skills. The most crucial problem was that many members did not follow the UML (Unified Modeling Language) diagram that we created to design the details; our source codes were not compatible to each other's. With many problems, our project ended to be unsuccessful and produced an incomplete piece of Blackjack game.
Thinking back to the experience, I think my team could do better if I was a better leader. If I examined the ability of each member before assigning their parts, I could find out members who have weak skills. I could assist them to learn what they need and I could make them join school's computer science club to increase their skill. Also I had to find out their strength so that I could distribute works efficiently. For the idle members, I had to seriously talk about their problems individually instead of giving up. Finally I could use developing tools such as Gantt Chart to manage the schedule and Google docs to share documents. I believe this experience, although unsuccessful, will be a variable nutrient for me to be a better leader and it will assist me to make my dream a reality.
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