UBC Personal Statement - What I have learnt about myself as a leader and a team member ............

Describe what you have learnt about yourself as a leader and team member through your past experiences. Provide specific examples. What skills did you further develop or address in the near future and how?

my team's passion

Through my past experiences, I have developed skills as a team member in and outside of school. In my academic life, I have always tried to contribute to different team projects which has helped me obtain management and organization skills. I have learned to become a versatile and a conversant team member through these projects. A major activity that has helped me obtain these skills is Debate. I cherish every moment because of my team's passion towards deploying rational and reasonable arguments. Whether we lose or win, debate is an empowering part of my life, because of the team's hard work that is put in. It has taught me to value proper communication and make an optimistic contribution the efforts made by the team members. In addition, I have also participated in musical activities within school such as orchestra. Taking part in orchestra has taught me to work as a team and the importance of discipline. I have learned the importance of how each individual member plays an important role and it's all those individual members that makes up a team.

Please help me improve this grammatically and help me with a better choice of words. I would like this to flow more smoothly ansd make it more concise.

Jaanvi, before you can polish the grammar of this essay, you first need to make sure that your content is appropriate and responsive to the prompt requirements. Since you are discussing Debate as a self-realization activity, you need to specify if you were the Debate team captain or a simple team member. You can launch the essay by saying :

I learned a number of things about myself as the debate team captain / as a member of the debate team.

Then make sure that you present all of the ideas in past tense such as "I always tried to contribute..." or "I learned to become a versatile..."

The smooth presentation will come from the use of the appropriate tense usage. Your grammar will fall into the correct presentation once the tense usage is corrected. By the way, the term is "win or lose" not "lose or win".

You should remove the introduction of your participation in the school orchestra because you were not able to build it up in a manner as strong as the reference to the debate team. Keeping that reference weakens the impact of what you have written and also closes the essay with an underdeveloped closing presentation.