Aradhana Muthabatulla

I have been participating in DECA for 3 years and have been doing the partner roleplay. We have to attend all the meetings and put in a lot of extra hours doing practice mock competitions and studying for our cluster exams. We do this in preparation for the Area competition where if you score highest out of everyone in your cluster you advance. Through this I learned about communication and product design and management. We would receive a couple page prompts asking to design a solution in regards to our topic, and would have 30 minutes to prepare before showcasing our solution to the judges. They score you based on the rubric, in specific the solution, communication and effectivity. My partner and I advanced our junior and senior year from the Area (district competition) to the state level.

I was the Logistics Director for the organization Intechual Coding. My role was to find companies to be potential partners with our organization and set up meetings for our team, and find advertisers. I had to go through an interview process in order to get this position, and had to find a list of potential companies and present a business plan.

• For the Congressional Award, I completed hours in 4 categories as listed below. I was able to discover new passions and gained new insights by working with children to adults, helped me sharpen my interpersonal, communication and time management. To win this award I had to complete 200 hours of Voluntary Public service, 100 hours of personal development, 100 hours of physical fitness, and at least 2 consecutive overnight stay trips for the expedition and exploration. I was awarded the silver medal and all the certificates, as I was eligible for those requirements as well.

I volunteered at a preschool called ArkRock Academy which is a STEM based preschool to kindle the curiosity of children. By demonstrating code projects, diverse languages, and science experiments it was a more in depth learning experience for the kids. In my time here at ArkRock I was an assistant teacher and worked with some kids with severe ADHD one-on-one and in group settings. I would help in each class wherever I was needed and helped plan projects. I learned so much about patience and organization while volunteering here and the ability to think quickly and always stay focused. In addition encounter different types of people with various personalities and my ability to work and teach them. This allowed myself to learn adaptability, flexibility and strengthen my soft skills.

This was a personal goal I started and I wanted to learn more about programming so I signed up for a course through the University of Michigan that taught Python. There were weekly assignments to complete but I finished it over the summer. In addition I also did a similar activity for a Data Structures lesson through Microsoft quick online courses and learned there.