Global UGRAD Essay [PDF]

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Essay 1 The Global UGRAD Program is for young leaders committed to serving their home communities. Why would you be a great participant in the Global UGRAD Program? I am an art and design student, and I have had that passion long before I entered art college. I have learned so many incredible things about art and design in a specific way of how both of them can cooperate with each other. I always remember Edgar Degas’s quote. “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” For me, art is a unique form of expression. That’s why a message becomes stronger when you send it through art. While design helps to construct things for society, combination between design and art could build a strong impact to people. I think it’s really important for an exchange student program like Global UGRAD to include an art and design student as one of the representatives from Indonesia. It is very unfortunate that art as a field of study rarely gets a priority. Indonesia with more than 17,000 islands and 633 ethnics has diverse culture. With the advance of technology and art method, Indonesian diverse culture could create art novelty. And by bringing the idea of art novelty to other countries, it could build a new special bond between us. Many fields have always the possibilities to collaborate with art and design. For example, I am specialised in animation. From what I’ve experienced, people from other fields of study often need our help to make animation for them. It could be for their advertisement, simulation, educational video, or even software interaction. Then, what can I contribute for my home community after joining this program? As a person who has a deep interest in art and design, most of the people that I frequently interact with are also artists or designers. There’s a stereotype in Indonesia and I can see it directly by myself that artists and designers tend to work independently and behind the screen. In many cases, they are afraid to share their ideas to people. By joining this program, I do hope that I can learn many things so I can inspire and encourage more people in my community to become more open to others, to share their results, and to have broader collaboration. I’m sure there are many great students who want to join this program. However, I believe that I will be a great participant because I have my own purpose to build a strong connection between people through art and design, especially through animation. And I am eager to learn too. Since some of the best animation schools are in the US, going to US as an exchange student would give me a lot of opportunities. I want to develop mutual understanding about different culture that everyone has by sharing my animation or artworks about diversity in Indonesia with the people in US. And in return, I would give the same thing to my home community about the arts and culture that I have learned in US. So I believe this



program would give a lot of great impacts, not only for me, but also for everyone else around me.



Essay 2: Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader. A great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves.” Approaches to leadership can vary from person to person. What is your definition of a great leader? What are the strengths of your leadership style, and how .can it be improved? I think a great leader is a positive person who can influence his positive energy to people and create a positive surrounding them, such as comfort, free of worriness, happiness, obediance, and satisfaction. These conditions could make people have a freedom to express themselves and their ideas, and by having that freedom people can cooperate with each other well. However, positive condition happens when people obey the leader neither because they are afraid nor feel ashamed, but because they believe it’s s a good thing for them and the best thing to do. I have three things that are suitable for me to keep when I become a leader open minded, calm, and building a solid solution. Firstly, open minded is a prominent thing to do. It leads to simpathy, empathy, and appreciation. Secondly, I like to lead people in a calm way. It could be my strength because the importance of a leader is to make a comfortable situation among the people. If I’m too noisy and furious, the situation will become tense and affect people’s mood. If I speak too much, there won’t be enough chances for everybody to speak up too. Then finally, the next important thing is to unite all of the ideas into one harmony by building a solid solution for all of them. This is where creativity in leadership takes in. In the latest experience, I worked in a team for my college task in my current semester. We made an exhibition in a city mall. I was assigned by my teammates as the coordinator for booth making . It was not an easy job because I had to deal with booth design, material planning, and especially with the team work for building the booth itself. It worked well at the beginning, some of my teammates gave suggestions for the material and design that we might use. I appreciated all the ideas then I was the one who considered the last blueprint. I think we did a great cooperation at that time. But when it came to building the booth, some unexpected problems happened such as a false measurement or some materials that we forgot to buy. For a moment I was confused. Some of my friends got panicked and angry, even some had a little fight between them. But not for so long,I tried to



handle the situation by not showing my worry to everyone. I tried to soothe the unpleasant mood and instantly opened a new short discussion on the alternatives solution that we could get. Finally it ended up alright, and I was very grateful because my team got the best booth display award. From my experience related to my confusion, I know it happened because I still didn’t have a full understanding about the people around me. Without the full understanding, it’s hard to make a positive condition in a broad objective way. That’s the crucial thing that I have to improve from my leadership. I’m trying to do my best to keep connecting people, and sharing each other experiences and ideas. By knowing people from different culture, it could improve my sense to understand others and the way to handle conflicts. So, certainly I still have a lot of things to be learned to be a great leader and I need so much experience too. That’s why I hope this exchange student program would give me a chance to get more worthy experiences to learn to become a great leader.