UBC Sauder School of Business - Personal Profile Essay - RESPONSE TO A PROBLEM /UNFAMILIAR SITUATION

Personal Profile Essay

I didn't enjoy poetry. I despised everything about it. Yes, I despised it, especially when I was forced to absorb it in school each year. Everything about it irked me. That's exactly what I thought regarding poetry up until recently. When I was essentially forced to participate in mandatory "Poetry in Voice" competition, I thought it was the end of the world. When details of the competition were announced, I was relieved to know that we had to perform a poem, not create our own. What seemed like a compromise at the time only brought up a harder challenge; performing poetry. The first couple of times I had to perform it was awful. The eyes of my class and my nerves got to me and my performance was flat. I went home in distress and explained the situation to my parents. They gave me the advice of combining my passion for acting with this situation. This made a ton of sense to me. I would just treat this as a scene and the class would be an audience of sorts. The next couple of times I performed I implemented the techniques I learned in acting class to deliver my performance with great improvement. This led to me winning the class competition and the school competition. I even competed at regionals and got selected for qualifiers at nationals. I learned the valuable lesson of not shutting down any opportunities. Now, I always look at obstacles from different perspectives and give everything a shot because it may lead to good things I never expected.

This is certainly a good response that covers both the problem and unfamiliar situation prompt. I like that you did not choose one topic over the other. The combined discussion allows for more background information from you to flow through. In the eyes of the reviewer , you will have given him the chance to see more about your reaction to unfamiliar situations.

If anything needs to be improved in this presentation, it should be the page format. It will be much easier on the eyes of the reader to read this over 2 or 3 paragraphs. Maybe do it as:

Par. 1: Introduce the problem and situation
Par. 2: The result of the unfamiliarity
Par. 3: How it was resolved + the positive outcome

Format correction will also make the paper more impactful as it is reviewed by the screener.