## Leadership / Community _Describe an example of a_ **leadership** _experience in which you’ve positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes, or contributed to group efforts over time._ Our school newspaper was dying. Our monthly edition sat in stacks in common spcaes, not picked up by thouse who ordered them. I asked our editor how many students actually read it. "Maybe twenty? We don't really track it." 20 out of 200 students. I called a meeting with our seven-person team. Instead of planning next month's theme, I asked: "Why does this newspaper exist?" A brief silence. We'd been publishing into a void. For two hours, we talked about what we actually wanted. We landed on three consensuses: 1. We need a clear mission statement 2. We need to track and measure our impact in terms of genuine engagement 3. We need to better engage the larger community, foster an environment that encourages deep conversation, and avoid self-entertainment My proposed solution might seem radical at first: abandon the print edition for an online forum, where it's much easier to make people to make posts, respond, and comment under each other's post. I expected pushbacks, but surprinsingly after our discussion, everything seemed to flow naturally. Our IT department immediately flagged GDPR and safeguarding concerns. To address this, I studied data protection regulations and drafted a proposal outlining technical solutions and a three-tier moderation process. After three months of persistence, we received approval. The result were surprisingly visible.  For our first online edition, "What's Important to You," 35 students posted within 48 hours. By the end of the week, 120 students—over half the school—had engaged. Later, a student named Aimee posted her struggle with ADHD, and he comment section became a support network. I am really happy for her because she was never quite seen by others in school. The biggest lesson wasn't about technology. It was about the difference between doing something just because people were doing it and building something for a purpose. I'm leaving, but the platform remains.  It is largely self-running and versatile, allowing future students to rename and redesign sections or channels as they see fit. We simply provided the spark, and I look forward to seeing how the community evolves in the years to come. --- ## Talent & Skill _What would you say is your_ **greatest talent or skill**_? How have you developed and demonstrated that talent over time?_ My chemistry teacher mentioned something about entropy. I immediately pulled up my notes on complexity science from two months earlier. Suddenly, both concepts clicked in a new way. But when I tried to find that connection again days later, it had vanished into scattered documents. That frustration sparked an obsession: how do we best manage knowledge and make our thinking visible and cumulative? I dove into Personal Knowledge Management (PKM). I studied how ideas compound when properly connected, how patterns emerge across disciplines, how questions lead to better questions. It's not about capturing more information, but building a network where ideas can grow and interact with each other. My system now holds over 500,000 words, but what matters isn't the volume, but the thinking it enables. More broadly, I belive my tool for learning points to something more significant about our education. While in our classroom, students copy what's on the board, my system helps me structure my own thinking, dscover my own blind spots, and self-direct my learning. Traditional education and "AI tutors" are designed to hands down answers within a structured curriculum; real learning is about developing and exploring our own questions. My friends are amazed by my interconnected graph of notes by initmiated by my tools -- Obsidian, custom scripts, markdown syntax. Meanwhile, lots of people struggle to pull together research resources, class notes, and other resources to write their Extended Essay. And then I thought, maybe I can somehow simplify and package my system so that it can help more people. So I made an note-taking app called Larc (Learning Architect) that makes it intuitive to link notes, with the power of an AI agent that process sources, ask questions and suggest structures. I shared the app within my school community. The greater mission is to create something that can truly empower self-directed learning, so that we became less dependent on school institutions and curriculums. Because learning is always bigger than school. However for the time being, as long as I saw someone writing their Extended Essay with my app, I am more than happy. --- ## Academic Subject _Think about an_ **academic subject** _that inspires you. Describe how you’ve furthered this interest inside and/or outside the classroom._ I thought I understood how things worked—until I read Donella Meadows' "Thinking in Systems" and realized I'd been seeing the world wrong. I'd always approached problems linearly: find the cause, apply a solution. But Meadows showed me that most interesting problems are embedded in systems with feedback loops, delays, and emergent behaviors. A "solution" in one part can create problems elsewhere. The obvious cause is rarely the real leverage point. During a UWC Summer Course in Vietnam, I saw this play out. My cohort initially planned to renovate a village school, but conversations with elders revealed that crumbling infrastructure was merely a symptom of deep-seated economic and political pressures. I became fascinated by systems dynamics: the study of how complex systems behave over time, and how their structure determines their behavior. Realizing sustainable change required analyzing structure, I took a Systems Dynamics Society course to master formal tools like stock-and-flow diagrams and causal loops. I applied this lens to my extracurriculars. As a co-founder of School TV, I diagnosed our chaotic production -- endless meetings and missed deadlines --not as a "people problem," but a system design failure. I mapped our workflow, identified bottlenecks, and built a Notion dashboard showing responsibilities and progress. Coordination became seamless, allowing the team to spend less time on logistics and more on creativity. Academically, I questioned my IB Economics curriculum through a systems view. I realized standard models treated the environment as an "externality" and assumed infinite growth within finite boundaries. I attended the European Sustainability and Education conference and resonated with Jennifer Brandsberg-Engelmann's Regenerative Economics Curriculum Movement -- seeking to rewrite how Economic thinking is taught around the world for sustainability and system thinking. Inspired by her work, I invited her to guest lecture at my school. Systems thinking has transformed me from a linear problem-solver into a structural thinker. Whether optimizing a creative team or challenging economic axioms, I now look for the leverage points hidden within complexity.  At university, I am eager to apply this multidimensional perspective to my studies, designing solutions that address root causes rather than just visible symptoms. --- ## Final 升华 _Beyond what has already been shared in your application,_ **what do you believe makes you a strong candidate** _for admission to the University of California?_ Three years ago, I was the student who raised my hand with "but what about..." questions. My teachers appreciated my curiosity but seemed frustrated and couldn't support me on my side-quests. I wasn't being difficult—I wanted to understand not just _what_ we were learning, but _why_ it mattered and _how_ it connected to reality. I've since realized what frustrated me: I was being taught to consume knowledge when I wanted to create with it. So I built my own knowledge management system because traditional note-taking felt like throwing ideas into a void. I redesigned our school newspaper because simply publishing felt pointless. Traditional education treats knowledge as something to acquire and store. But knowledge and learning is meaningless unless turned into action and projects and try to make an impact in the direct interaciton with the world. Real understanding comes from _using_ ideas to solve problems, testing theories against reality, building things that work or learning why they don't. Reading about systems thinking was interesting; mapping our TV workflow taught me what feedback loops actually mean. Studying economics was fine; questioning curriculum assumptions with Jennifer showed me how ideas shape reality. You can't build meaningful things alone. I realized I learn best when building something that matters to other people. My PKM system is powerful personally, but its real test came helping friends use similar tools. Building Larc meant understanding how different people learn and what prevents them from learning effectively. The newspaper transformation required navigating bureaucracy and designing for how communities actually behave, not how I wished they would. This is why I'm drawn to UC's culture of collaborative building. I don't want four years reading textbooks in isolation. I want environments where students build together. Ultimately, education should unlock human potential, not constrain it. I've spent three years learning to see systems, building tools, and trying to help others. Form time to time I still felt constrained by my high school environement and curriculum. At UC, I'm ready to do this at a scale that creates real change, as I truly step into the world.