UBC Business Tech Management Personal Profile, Unfamiliar Situation

Explain how you responded to a problem and/or an unfamiliar situation. What did you do, what was the outcome, and what did you learn from the experience?

questioning influential people

When I was in my SHSM co-op class, I was given a challenging project where I had to contact multiple innovators in my field of study (health and wellness). I was required to ask these individuals several questions regarding how they got to where they are today, and how they view the future of the healthcare industry. Since it was a professional assignment where I had to connect with these influential individuals, I was nervous on being able to complete this project with a high degree of effectiveness. Therefore, I decided to break down the assignment into many different parts. In the end, I scored a high mark and I was proud of my own personal growth during this time. This situation had taught me the importance of solving problems step by step, as attacking it as a whole will only make the issue more complicated.

@anxjso

Hi Karin,

I think each of the problem, solution and outcome can be developed further than only describe within one sentence.
In my suggestion, you can try explain more:
- the challenges that make this project a problem for you,
- why you think the solution you take is the best to address the problem,
- other outcomes you have gained from it , maybe you develop for example communication / correspondence skill, the answers from the innovators that you got is motivating or etc.

Hope it helps.

@Streetwalker

I took your comments into consideration and revised it:

When I was in my SHSM (...)
... future of the healthcare industry. Since I considered myself as an introvert, the idea of connecting with these influential individuals made me nervous. As a result of this, I knew that verbal communication was one of my weaknesses, so I made the decision to communicate with the innovators via email instead. The majority of responses that I had received back from the innovators had motivated me to step out of my shell and to record a video that was dedicated to their responses. In the end, I scored a high mark and I was proud of my own personal growth during this time. This situation had taught me how to work around my weaknesses when confronting challenges.

Thank you!

@anxjso

Hi Karin,

I see that you have explain more about the problems. However I don't see how sending emails to the innovators address the problems. What other efforts you have put in to solve the problems? If really there is no other solution than sending out emails, how you get their emails address? How you make sure that they will reply to your email?

In the paragraph you mention about recording a video, if you can describe what kind of video it is, who are target for your audience of the video?

I am happy knowing if I am any of help for you. And if hope others can give their opinions as well to this essay to see if there are other possibilities to make thiss essay a good one.

Karin, The situation and solution to the problem that you discussed both times is too elementary and does not show how you can actually handle a real life situation without the aid of gadgets or technology. Since you opted to use email to question the interviewees, you presented a character trait (shyness) that you did not try to overcome as part of the solution to the problem. Taking the video of you talking alone is not as impressive as facing your fears and actually facing the people you had to interview face to face. All problems are faced on a step by step basis, so learning a skill set is a given in this scenario. The personal lesson is what is important here.

In this sort of prompt, you are expected to display problem solving skills and your ability to overcome an obstacle or adversity by improving your own character traits in order to create a solution to the situation. That said though, I will not ask you to write a new essay if you feel that your scenario above is suitable enough for your needs or if you do not have a more impressive scenario to discuss with the reviewer. I am just voicing out an opinion here and the final decision still rests upon you.