If you’re the editor of the school paper, the president of the Spanish club, or the person in charge of fundraising for the cheerleading squad, you’ve got an important job to do. You’ll get to try a lot of things, and some will work better than others. But you’ll learn a lot as you go. And at the end of the year, you’ll probably feel like now you could do the job even better by applying what you learned.
Why not share your expertise publicly?
What if the editor wrote a downloadable e-book and gave it away for free to any high school editor that wanted one?
What if the Spanish club president built a simple, free web page of all the best recipes they used for their lunches, a list of activities they did that the members really enjoyed, and a write up of their most successful events describing exactly what they did?
What if the fundraiser wrote a blog and shared everything she tried–both successful and unsuccessful–with downloadable copies of their pitch emails, photos of their most successful fundraisers, and tips other fundraising folks could learn?
Now you’re not just helping yourself and your organization. You’re helping the person who will take your place next year. And you’ll be helping other people in your position around the country—maybe even around the world.
And instead of just telling colleges you were the editor or the president or the fundraising chair, you could add,
“I wrote an e-book about how to be a good editor of the high school paper, and it’s been downloaded over 1200 times.”
“I built a webpage detailing how we ran the Spanish club, and it’s gotten over 2000 page views in just three months.”
“I wrote a blog about our fundraising experiences with tips to help other organizations learn from our success and mistakes, and I’ve gotten emails from over 400 students all over the country asking for my advice.”
That would get any college’s attention. Too bad nobody’s doing it. Yet.