UBC Personal profile question: Club - Important activities - Hackathon

I am struggling on this personal profile question:

Tell us more about one or two activities listed above that are most important to you.

Please explain the role you played and what you learned in the process. You will be asked for a reference who can speak to your response.

(maximum 350 words)

This is my response so far:

My club leadership activity is at the top of my list. I learned a lot about how to get along with other people. Since I was a very introverted person before I lead this club, it was a wonderful opportunity for me to learn important people skills. It was not easy for me to get used to the leadership role quickly because I faced random obstacles on my way. One of the first obstacles I faced was how to make other people understand what I am teaching. I started to realize that I need to use modify my words more appropriate to people who are new to programming. The problem is that I used lots of very technical terms which made my club members head spin. My friends and I experimented with various teaching plans and we found out that only a few worked well. I learned a lot in the process. For instance, I learned that many people will not learn as quickly as I do so sometimes I need to slow down a bit.

Next to my club leadership activity is Hackathon. This event strengthened my teamwork and my ability to work under time pressure. So far, I have participated in two Hackathons, one during the summer of my grade eleven and twelve year and another happened very recently. Hackathons does not only improve my technical skills but it helped me to realize how good teamwork brings value to the project. During my first Hackathon, my team at first had no idea how to communicate well. Since I am hearing-impaired this made the problem worse. Fortunately, we figured out our communication strategy and we finished our game project right on time. We learned how to effectively use Git to synchronize our efforts. Also, Hackathons taught me how to think and react fast. I am used to be a slow programmer, after Hackathons I can think the solution to any programming problems as quickly as possible. The second Hackathon went well, I collaborated with my team to build a software that solves a problem relating to digital education.

Did I answer this question well? I would be glad if you can give me some feedbacks on my response. I am open to strong criticisms. Thank you in advance.

@marethyu12
Hello, welcome to the forum! Here's my feedback on your writing that I hope will somehow be of help to you.

First and foremost, I think that you should have introduced a more detailed outlook on what the activities are immediately upon introducing them. For instance, take a look at your first paragraph. The first few sentences here, from the get-go, doesn't necessarily provide an explanation on the scope of responsibilities that you have as a member/participant of these club leadership activities. Due to this reason, it is imperative that you establish a central point of discussion prior to expounding everything else. Again, this is also applicable to the second activity that you introduced.

Furthermore, try to be more specific with these activities. In the first activity, it was still unclear what specifically you had done in the club leadership activities. Try to detail out the specific steps that you had done in order to abide by these rules. The latter parts of the writing should be treated with the same regard.

Technically-speaking, your writing is decently fine in terms of grammar, punctuation, and the like - you just truly need to work more on being more specific. Write as though you are explaining everything to someone who's fully unaware of what these terms mean.