The Essays That Got Me Into UC Berkeley At 16 Years Old — Part 2
- Aaron Bai
- Feb 12, 2023
- 2 min read
Introduction
This is part of my series in posting my college application essays. If you'd like to read Part 1 first, it'll dive into why I'm doing this and a little about myself.
Prompt #2 — Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side.
I spent countless nights glued to my computer learning Adobe Premiere, motivated to provide a platform for other sneakerheads like myself to share their sneaker stories. When I started putting out episodes of Sneaker Talk on my YouTube channel, I never could have imagined that this new skill would land me my first job.
During my summer internship with XPOWER Manufacturer, I was showing my videos to my coworkers during a discussion about the exclusive Jordan resell market. At the time, XPOWER was looking to use media content to push their new CovidShield products onto the market. After the CEO viewed my videos, I was offered a full time position to stay past my internship to do just that. My first project was to create a series of informational videos about our disinfectant fogger that could be presented to multiple business partners, but as I started receiving feedback from management, I realized there was still space to improve.
My whole life, I’ve looked at communication as a science. Since my first day of debate practice, my teammates and I had the format of assertion, reasoning, and evidence drilled into our brains. And for each argument my opponents threw at me during a tournament, all I had to do was create my refutation accordingly and plug it into the template. Through years of repetition, it became second nature—even under the pressure of championship finals.
But creating content for XPOWER opened my eyes to a new perspective on communication. Sticking to the rules wouldn’t work. Although I was only focused on one product, I needed to think creatively about how to attract executives in various industries. In order to effectively communicate our message to different sectors, every video had to be shot creatively and every word had to be adjusted.
This project showed me that communication is not just a science, but also an art. After my videos helped set a monthly sales record for XPOWER, I’m excited to bring this newfound creative mindset to everything from my sneaker videos to parliamentary debate.
Contact Me
If you want to reach me for any questions, please shoot me a message on any of my social medias:
Comments