While I still need work on my communicating in private social settings, I have excellent communication skills in public contexts such as speaking and performance. In High School, I was heavily involved in the drama program at my school and competed in the 2020 Southeast Asia Forensics Speech and Debate Tournament in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Since beginning studies at Texas A&M, I have expanded that experience to include academic presentation, a form of public communication very different from most styles I have used before. While still performative, it heavily emphasizes transfer of information.
Presenting about Intercultural Memes at Texas A&M's Sixteenth Annual Freshman Communication Research Conference.
Critical Problem Solving
I like to think that my problem solving skills are excellent. This is largely due to the high speed at which I make connections between ideas, allowing me to negotiate alternative solutions in my mind quickly when issues arrive.
A prime example was in May of this year; after two years of being shut down by COVID-19, my High School's drama program (I was the student leader of the Drama Club) finally had the opportunity to put on a production due to loosened restrictions, but there was only about a month left for the performance to happen in. I quickly wrote a play which I directed and which was a great success in the school. With only a week to write and four rehearsals for the cast, I was constantly meeting challenges and being forced to rapidly come up solutions that didn't compromise the quality of the production.
Me, performing as the "Stage Director" (narrator) character in the play, titled "City of Villains."
I'm more proud of this project than almost any other project I've made.
Collaboration
My collaboration skills could use some work; I tend to either take charge and try to have as much control over projects as I can or I retract and only do what I'm told to do.
I've seen this improve since reaching Texas A&M, though. In both my research project on Intercultural Memes for COMM 101 (pictured above) and another project for JOUR 102, I started at one or the other extreme and adapted until I was closer to healthy collaboration as I became more comfortable with the group.
Another example of collaboration is my participation in A&M's Concert Band and Hullabaloo Band.
Me playing the trombone in the Hullabaloo Band at a Men's Basketball game.
Competencies
One of the biggest ways that my communication has improved since beginning university has been my confidence in everyday conversation. Rather than being shy and unassuming when conversing, I've become more willing to share things that are important to me, often to a similar level of aptitude to when the public performances I'm used to putting on, such as the TED-Ed talk I gave last year, which used a fairly informal and personal tone.
Me giving my TED-Ed talk, The Pollution to Our Problems
