University of Chicago: Extended Essay
A lot of people now have their essays written by not just family or friends, but by companies or consultants dedicated to writing admission essays. The admissions officer isn’t looking at whether you completed the essay or not. He’s looking at what your essay says about you. This includes much more than content. It includes your writing style, your word choice, and the overall structure of the essay. If you think you can get away with not writing your essay do remember that some universities call you for interviews and can tell straight away whether it was you who wrote those words on paper
Chicago author Nelson Algren said, “A writer does well if in his whole life he can tell the story of one street.” Chicagoans, but not just Chicagoans, have always found something instructive, and pleasing, and profound in the stories of their block, of Main Street, of Highway 61, of a farm lane, of the Celestial Highway. Tell us the story of a street, path, road — real or imagined or metaphorical.
In 2016, the Asia Pacific ICT Alliance (APICTA) Awards were held in Taipei, Taiwan. As part of Team Pakistan I travelled seven thousand eight hundred kilometres, spent six months preparing to compete at the awards, and did countless revisions to my presentation. By the time the dust settled my presentation had undergone a hundred and fifty three iterations. This was my path to becoming a different person, sort of like fast tracking to maturity. It meant being in the same room as leaders of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) field, esteemed university professors, CEOs, and interacting with them as they asked the details of my project. It also meant learning how to manage money, resources, time, and schedules by myself, and more importantly learn how to pitch quickly and concisely. A skill that any aspiring entrepreneur needs.
The APICTA Awards are known in the region as the Oscars of the ICT arena. The road to the awards isn’t easy. You first have to submit nominations for the national ICT awards, in this case the P@SHA (Pakistan Software Housing Association) ICT Awards, and once you’ve sent in your nomination they go through a screening and judging process where you are then selected to compete in the Awards. Competing means creating a viable product and being able to pitch and present in front of a panel of judges who are experienced players in the field.
The competition is serious. You’re competing against Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Sri Lanka and another thirteen countries from the APAC region. If none of the nominees meet the judges’ criteria then regardless of who has the highest points there is no winner. The award isn’t given unless you come up with an innovative and life enhancing product. There is only one project that takes the trophy home. People who come close are given merits. The remaining participants try and come back next year or go home and move on to other interests.
Once I received the email for my nomination’s acceptance I started thinking about the project seriously. For me convincing the judges meant that I needed to start working on my presentation early on. I not only had to balance academics and sports, now I had to throw a national competition into the mix, but I wanted the challenge. I wanted to see how well I would perform.
Though the origins of my project came from an internship my friends and I did, the project was slowly turning out to be a real world solution. Relatively new e-commerce companies were looking for a way to support customers without hiring chat support. For these web based stores, many of whom were start-ups, the idea of hiring customer support didn’t sit well because of the costs associated with them. They would have to spend money that they didn’t have. My project grew as I learnt more on the go. My initial presentation for the P@SHA ICT Awards went through fifteen different variations. At the APICTA Awards however that presentation went through a hundred and fifty three variations. I’m pretty sure we made three revisions just while on the ten hour flight from Dubai to Taiwan.
I learnt to accept criticism and, rather than feel dejected by it, I used it to make each of my presentations stronger than the last. The first set of pitches I did weren’t interactive and didn’t connect with my mentors. However towards the end the pitch became stronger until each person we met would have an expression on their face that showed us even if the listener wasn’t in tune with technological advances and jargon, they understood the product and its value, and were intrigued by what it could do.
Although I’d been doing drama and theatre for over five years, APICTA helped me learn more about impressions and connecting with the audience. We’d sit with strangers and talk to them about our project and see what their reaction was. We’d research our judges to make sure we didn’t do anything that was considered rude in their culture. Even though I love growing a beard, for APICTA I went clean shaven in order to make the best possible impact on the judges from the Far East. My PowerPoint presentations shifted from the usual text focused slides to more image and visual focused. We played with colours, with flow, and with visual representations using smart art. That experience changed the way all my presentations are now. I used the experience to show many of my friends and classmates an alternate way of interacting and engaging audiences.
Even though I like stepping into a challenge where many of the details are unknown due to inexperience, this seemed a bit of a stretch even to me. The last time a Pakistani student had won in the student category was in 2009. For the last 8 years Pakistan had drawn up blank.
Coming from a residential street located behind a sports ground in the bustling city of Karachi and ending up at the Grand Palace Hotel in Taipei, Taiwan, I could never imagine taking part in a competition of this level as a seventeen year old. To put the importance of the competition into perspective, the award night’s key speaker was the President of Taiwan herself. There were two hundred and sixty five entries, representing sixteen economies, being rated by over sixty judges. Every entry had arrived in Taiwan by winning in their category in their national competitions. Over the next few days the judges would be picking the best of the best. Coordinating training schedules with mentors, who were mainly CEOs of important technology companies in Pakistan, preparing a presentation while feeling out of your league, managing your budget given for food, I guess you could call all of these bumps in the road. Bumps in the road however make the journey interesting and that’s what they did.
On the awards night there was a rollercoaster of emotions. In the initial winners who’d be receiving trophies my name wasn’t mentioned. Although I knew that there were projects better than mine I still felt I had the possibility of winning. I was disappointed in myself that I hadn’t won for my college and for Team Pakistan. Then my name was called out as the first on the merit list. That meant I had come close to being the winner. As my name was called I was disappointed yet happy. I had won. However I wouldn’t be bringing home the trophy. Yet I had come as close as I could, and I wasn’t going home empty handed.
Out of the hundreds of contenders at APICTA, chosen from a pool of thousands in the region, I put together something that the judges liked. Even though I hadn’t won, I had come close. I had been representing my college and my country. That itself made me happy beyond expression. The APICTA Awards was my path to maturing, working, being part of something bigger than myself. Those are the roads I want to travel. The ones that lead to more than just yourself.