— WARNING: This PIQ is for Academic and Studying Purposes Only – DO NOT COPY —

Please describe how you have prepared for your intended major, including your readiness to succeed in your upper-division courses once you enroll at the university.

I believe my ability, preparedness, and readiness for upper-division classes have been enshrined inside of me from day one, following my decision to return back to school after being in the workforce for over seven years. Over the past seven years, I have developed a cautious mentality when making critical decisions and a mindset to carefully consider all of the options in front of me against my future goals. After that, I will develop a detailed plan of what I want to accomplish at every step of the way and make sure I can see some incremental progress along that way to keep myself motivated and ambitious. Quite frankly, these traits were proven instrumental in my academic pursuit, and that is a process of what I refer to as my critical three-pointers. First, before I enrolled in classes, I took some time to look over all the majors offered at my college and performed a few analyses to determine which majors are likely to fit in my future career plans and for the future job market. Fortunately, this process was made completely effortless with my abundant work experience in the technology and real estate industries. The second task I completed was to consult with one of our academic counselors to find out some of the programs the school offers to make myself more competitive among other candidates when I need to transfer in two years. This allows me to strategically plan out all of the classes for every semester and intersession leading up to the point of transfer that I would need to take and complete to establish an academic timeframe for myself to follow. After that, the task was to create a personalized educational planner and transcribe all required general education and major classes listed on the website into a centralized, easy-to-read, and free-from-distractions spreadsheet separated by each individual term and category of courses. Hence, it is needless to say that this type of strategic planning and mentality will continue to shine bright as I pursue my higher division classes here on UC campuses.

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.

It is entirely understandable for someone to excel at one subject over another. In fact, I would personally identify myself more as an art person than I am with science or math. However, I am also a staunch believer that for a person to succeed in life, they should be equally as good as they are scientifically and artistically, as there is a need for a healthy balance. With this mentality, although I am an art student, I have also developed an extensive interest in science, math, and technology. In past jobs, I have witnessed many clashes between software development and business division colleagues simply because they do not know the scope of work from the other division. Quite frankly, this is where I stood out the most among my peers when I worked in the tech industry. This shines even brighter when the time comes to training new junior staff members, particularly with new hires that do not have industry or technical knowledge. This is because I could break down the more intricate technical concepts by transcribing them into simple, easy-to-understand everyday analogies that a broader, non-technical savvy audience understands. Some excellent examples of this skill in action were when I had to explain to my colleagues why PCI express slots have different sizes and the reasoning behind developing slots with different speed ratings. Also, there was another time that I had to explain during my interview for the analyst position when the interviewers asked me to put the traceroute concept into layman’s terms, to which I responded with an analogy of GPS and compared it with Waze and Google Maps. Due to this easy-to-understand training structure, I had already trained roughly ten new analysts by the time I left the company. These skills will shine even brighter on UC campuses, and I hope to bring these analogies into my classrooms and to my professors and peers on our UC campus.

What would you say is your greatest talent or skill? How have you developed and demonstrated that talent over time?

Some of the best and most sought-after traits for working professionals are the person’s exceptional level of attention to detail and their willingness to be proactive and bold in their decision-making. Luckily, I had the chance to develop all of these qualities over my past eight years working in various job capacities, especially in the real estate industry. One of the most memorable moments in my career happened on a beautiful Monday morning several years ago when I was preparing a deposit check for an escrow officer for one of our business client’s commercial transactions. It is urgent because this transaction is set to close in just under fourteen calendar days. While preparing the deposit check, however, the name of the escrow office caught my eye. This is because of a casual conversation I overheard just a couple of weeks ago during training sessions that I was conducting with our agents. Since this escrow office sounded like the one I overheard during that meeting, I immediately went online and searched for this specific escrow to quickly look over their reviews. Sure enough, there were indeed lots of negative reviews complaining about how their deposit money was being mishandled at this office. With that in mind, feelings of concern and unease quickly arose. Therefore, out of instinct, I took out my phone and recorded a short video of the preparation process. After the check was delivered that afternoon, I noticed that the client’s name was wrong on their deposit receipt. The escrow officer grew increasingly irritated when I confronted her about this issue. As the argument continued, she began to accuse us of sending her the wrong check and denied the possibility of her fault. That is when I pulled out the video, sent it to her email, and blind-copied our clients. When our clients saw our email exchange, they praised us for our transparency. And that is how I resolved a dispute, protected my company from a false allegation, and, most importantly, protected our client from a potentially fraudulent transaction.

Describe the most significant challenge you have faced and the steps you have taken to overcome this challenge. How has this challenge affected your academic achievement?

As a person returning to school with years of gap in between, the maturity and self-discipline aspect of my work-life has proven to be hugely beneficial in my self-improvement process within higher education. However, if there is one most important aspect of life I have learned over the years, it is the hard fact that life is not always smooth sailing. There ought to be some curveballs and obstacles thrown at you to test your commitment to your goals. There have been many occasions that speak to this, starting with our family’s financial collapse in 2013. In 2013, during a routine checkup, my mom had diagnosed with stage two breast cancer, and my dad was also laid off from work due to a work-induced back injury. Due to all of these incidents happening concurrently, our family finances took a sharp decline for the worst. At that time, as a senior in high school, I could not simply be a bystander to all these unfolding misfortunes. Thus, I decided to drop out of high school to find a job to support my family financially. Unfortunately, since I had become our family’s sole breadwinner, I never had the time nor the resources to return back to school to finish my most-desired educational degree, that is, until now. Nevertheless, in the years leading up to my decision to return in 2021, I have never, at once, given up. Nor have I let any of those life challenges and obstacles extinguish my burning desire to improve and advance. In 2014, despite routinely taking my mom to the hospital to do chemotherapy sessions, work part-time, and care for my dad at home, I studied on the side to ultimately get my GED certification. Even after getting my GED, I continued on my path to self-improvement by reading and watching educational videos in various subject areas in hopes that one day I may return back to school. All these life experiences have helped shape me as an immensely independent and capable person who I believe will be an enormous asset to the UC family.