With my Calculus exam and my best friend’s birthday on the same day, I had no choice but to study and bake on the same night. At 8:30, I quickly started throwing ingredients such as vanilla extract, salt, and sugar into a bowl, yet carefully weighed out my flour, baking powder, and baking soda. I know what ingredients are essential to measure precisely and what ingredients I can eyeball for baking a cake. I know what details I should be a perfectionist about and what to improvise with. Base layer frosting actually looks a little better when it’s rough around the edges, but delicate piping can make or break a cake. By 9:30, my cake was finished, and I can resume practicing integrals. 

Sometimes, though, there is not just a cake to decorate but a giant theater set, but I’ve found the same philosophy applies. One week before our school’s annual musical, the stage crew had only one week left to finish painting our Jungle backdrop, but so far, we only had pencil marks on plywood. Furrowing my brows in frustration, I started to step back. In my head, the lightbulb lit up as I took smears of different hues of green and started finger painting multiple leaves at once, making sure every leaf was unique but coherent. After a couple of hours, I stood back and looked at the backdrop altogether. We got a lot of work done. Later that year, I ended up winning an award for MVA: Most Valuable Artist. My art teacher commended me for balancing intricate details with the overall goal of the set. 

I have a talent for pursuing big-picture visions without sacrificing details, and this talent is helpful in areas other than cake and set decorating. During my AP Computer Science A class, whenever we had a timed coding problem to solve, I would always lay out a plan before tackling the pages of functions. For my digital art, I start with a composition sketch before the delicate line work. That way, I would always be sure the goal is achieved.