How have you exhibited outstanding leadership? (250-500)
During the latter half of junior year, my friends and I formed a group to cover different songs and dances. Our first cover was “Sing for You,” a ballad by the Korean-pop group EXO. I thought, with the right vocal part distribution, we could showcase our love for the song and language through a powerful performance.
The initial plan was to distribute the nine singers’ parts evenly among the five of us. However, we soon realized that our individual singing styles clashed, creating a discordancy too difficult to repair. Since I had the most vocal training and Korean language experience out of all of us, I started teaching them how to pronounce the lyrics, helping them open up and sing with the right dynamics, emotions, and accents. They tried relentlessly to learn their parts, but they felt uncomfortable with having so many, making the singing process difficult to move forward. We all wanted to make the cover and were willing to work hard, but I did not want anyone to suffer for it.
I decided to make the process easier on the struggling members by rearranging the parts based on vocal and linguistic talents. I took the lead and went to work rearranging the song to better fit our voices and redistributing the parts through auditions. While part distribution was not equal, our voices complemented each other better, and everyone was more comfortable with their new parts. As the most experienced member of the group, I was always there to help everyone learn their parts with patience and careful guidance. I met with the others to give one-on-one help with pronunciation and arranged practices for us to sing together and provide each other with constructive criticism.
It is not easy to strike a balance between friendship and working together, but I managed to step up and do so, and the result was a marvelous symphony of teamwork and effort.