Collegewise

Write it down

I’ve written before that when you’re applying to college, it’s important to share the stories behind what you’ve done in high school.  A college isn’t as interested in your list of activities as they are in what you actually did--how you showed initiative, how you made an impact, what you learned from your successes and, yes, your failures.  You’re far from the only kid who will write “French Club” or “Yearbook Editor” or “Varsity Tennis” on your application.  But the stories behind those activities are yours alone.

As you go through high school, it’s a good idea to take the time to write those stories down as they happen so you can remember them more clearly when the time comes to apply to college.  How much money did your fundraiser bring in?  What did your dad say to you before your first game as a varsity pitcher?  What exactly happened that day at the yearbook staff meeting when you learned that you have to be better about how you give constructive criticism?  These are valuable moments in your life and colleges will be interested in learning about them.

I know it seems like you couldn’t possibly forget those details, but when you’re facing an application deadline and a question about the activity that’s had the most meaning for you, or a time you failed and what you learned from it, you’ll be glad to have those memories written down somewhere.   

Don’t run your club like a big business

A lot of high school clubs and organizations run like big businesses—everyone goes to meetings, a few key people actually make decisions, a few other people actually do the work (it’s not always the same people who make the decisions) and ultimately, not that much actually gets done.  It looks like this:  

A French Club with 20 members is planning a bake sale fundraiser for next month.  The club meets once a week for six weeks to talk about the fundraiser, update the group on the progress, and delegate tasks.  Ultimately, 3-4 people end up doing most of the work because there’s just not enough work for all 20 people to do.

If those six lunchtime meetings were each 30 minutes, that’s not three hours of meetings to run the bake sale.  That’s actually 60 hours of meetings because 20 people each gave up time to be there.  It’s hard to imagine they’re going to sell enough croissants to justify that many meetings.  

What if, instead, the group did this:

1. Come up with four or five or twelve projects that might help the club in addition to the bake sale.  Accept ahead of time that not all of them are going to be successes.  But a few of them almost certainly will be.

2. Break up into smaller teams. If the bake sale really only needs 3-4 people to make it happen, recruit an interested team of 3-4 and put one person in charge.  Then let them get to work.  They can meet if they want to meet, but there’s no reason to pull the other 16 people into a room at one time to hear their updates.  Then do the same thing for the other projects.

Now you’ve got 5-6 focused teams, each working on an interesting project where they get to make real contributions instead of just sitting in meetings.

How much more would your club get done?  How much more engaged would your members be? 

Your club or organization isn’t a big business.  Big businesses are bloated, slow to change, filled with titles and meetings and middle-managers.  Be like a small business--agile, quick to give responsibility to someone who wants it, and able to try new things without worrying that one failure will ruin youl. 

No need to be great at everything

Last year after one of my speeches at a high school, a father asked me,

“My daughter plays tennis, but it’s not doing anything for her.  She’s just not any good at it.  What should I tell her to do?”

I told him that as long as she was trying her best and enjoying tennis, he should back off and let her keep doing it. 

The competition for admission to college does not mean that high school kids have to be great at everything they try.  Colleges love a kid who sticks with something she enjoys even if she’s not bringing home trophies.  One of the most charming essays I’ve ever read was written by a Collegewise student who admitted she was the slowest runner on the cross country team (she once fell so far behind the pack in a race that she got lost and had to stop and ask two elderly bird watchers for directions).  It was impossible for any reader not to like her after reading that essay.

I’m not arguing in favor of embracing mediocrity here.  There’s nothing charming about getting Cs in math because you just don’t work that hard or getting fired from your part time job because you were always late.

But even the world’s most successful people aren’t great at everything they do.  There’s no reason any high school kid should feel pressured to be, either.  Throw your effort into doing things you enjoy.  Maximize the ones you’re good at.  And as long as the rest are fun, productive and not covered by the criminal code, keep enjoying them, too.

But what did you get done?

Busy isn’t enough.  Anyone can be busy.  What’s special is the people who actually get things done. 

A lot of high school kids feel pressured to shun free time and fill their days with commitments.  But too many commitments just inhibit your ability to get things done.  Instead of being obsessed with how busy you are, try redirecting that obsession towards actually getting a project out the door and finished.

• Repaint all the rooms at the shelter where you volunteer.
• Publish a separate issue of the newspaper that just highlights what the teachers are doing for students.
• Shop around for different printers and cut the production cost of the yearbook by 20%.
• Run a fundraiser for the jazz band to get new instruments.
• Get donations to send the team to basketball camp over the summer.
• Work your way up to manager at the restaurant and get experience leading shifts. 

And once you finish that project, obsess over getting the next project done.  Become the person who initiates, takes responsibility, and makes sure it gets finished. 

If you’re constantly referring to how busy you are, how many hours you’re putting in, or how much time an activity/project is taking, maybe it’s time to do a little less and actually get more done?

I’ve never met a student who…

• Went to paramedic school over the summer
• Wrote a guideline to running a successful fundraiser for the French club and gave it away for free online
• Ran a clinic over the summer to teach parents how to coach youth soccer teams
• Took journalism classes over the summer and then re-taught the material to the staff at the high school paper after school
• Volunteered in a literacy program and taught 20 previously illiterate adults how to read
• Worked all summer and spent the money to send his parents on a vacation they couldn’t afford to take on their own
• Got certified to teach CPR and then taught it for free to all her friends
• Tutored kids who couldn’t afford to take an SAT class
• Learned to cook every dish in his favorite cookbook
• Got certified as a BMW mechanic over the summer
• Wrote a blog for young pitchers about the art of pitching
• Participated in a standup comedy competition
• Made YouTube videos teaching how to dance
• Taught a group of elementary school kids how to be cheerleaders and brought them out to pee wee football games
• Organized a welcome committee to welcome new kids to the school every year and show them the ropes

The best way to stand out is to do something nobody else is doing.  Pick one (or find one of your own) and make it happen.

“I’m the only kid at my school who…”

I was a good—but far from great—soccer player in high school.  Two guys on my team played on our state select team and got full rides to colleges and I definitely wasn’t one of them.

But I was the only guy on the team who also played in an adult men’s league with a team full of guys from England.  They were all in their forties and most were well past their playing prime.  We never practiced and the team played like it, but we all had fun.  And after games, they’d bring me with them to the local English pub owned by one of the players.  He was nice enough to let me into the bar, but responsible enough to make sure I drank Coke while they all enjoyed their (many) pints of Newcastle. 

It made for a great college essay.  How many other soccer players applying do you think told the same story?

If you can’t be better at something than everyone else, maybe you could just do something that lets you say, “I’m the only kid at my school who…”

If you were in charge…

If you were in charge of your club, part-time job, school newspaper, etc., what would you do differently?

Maybe you’d have fewer meetings, try a different fundraiser, or do more to recruit new members.

Maybe you’d rearrange the stock at the store to make it easier for employees to take inventory, let customers know about the special items on sale, or make a sign that lists the employees' favorite sandwich combinations at the deli.

Maybe you’d publish more articles about the less visible teams in the sports section, or generate more ads so the paper would be better funded, or replace the editorial section with profiles of students who are doing newsworthy things.

Whatever your answers are, why not try doing them? 

Don’t wait for someone to offer you the chance.  The world rewards people who take initiative.  Take the first step and do part of the work to show that you’re serious about it.  Then ask for permission to put it to use.

“I have an idea for a fundraiser.  I already scouted out a location to do it and wrote the emails to promote it.  Can I show them to you at our meeting today to see what you think?”    

“I had an idea about rearranging the stock in the back.  I tried it with a few items—can you take a look and tell me if you like it?  If you do, I’ll rearrange the rest of it myself.”

“I was thinking we could replace the editorial section with some profiles of students.  I wrote a few of them to show you what I mean.  What do you think?"

You don't always have to wait to be in charge. 

A high school activity that will make you stand out

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.

What you can learn from a good class clown

Have you ever seen the movie Superbad?  Did you know the guy who wrote the screenplay did it back when he was 13 years old?  He signed up for a comedy class when he was just 12 and wrote the screenplay with a friend the following year.  By the time he got to high school, people were paying him to do stand up comedy at bar mitzvahs, parties and bars.  When he was 16, he won the Vancouver Amateur Comedy Contest.  Then he got a small part on a TV show. 

Today, he’s a movie star. 

The difference between Seth Rogen and the typical class clown is that Seth actually worked hard at being funny.  When a lot of other 13-year-olds were playing video games and watching TV, he and his buddy sat down and wrote a script that was later turned into a major motion picture.  He took classes.  He kept practicing.  He kept seeking out opportunities to get better.  That's dedication to your craft.

What would happen if you put the same time and effort into being funny, or dancing, or writing poetry, or playing the drums, or being a peer counselor, or training guide dogs for the blind, or running cross country, or solving complex math problems, or volunteering at your church, or anything else that you enjoy and want to be good at?   Some activities demand total dedication (we notice that our students who are swimmers are pretty much never fully dry).  But many--like stand up comedy--don't.  You have to make the choice to spend the time to get really good at it.

Yes--for those who know his story--I know that Rogen dropped out of high school and never went to college (he moved to LA to try to make it in show business).  I’m not suggesting you do the same. 

But if had wanted to go to college and did the academic work to get there, he would have had some pretty impressive activities and accomplishments to list on his application.  I’ll bet his college essays would have been hysterical.  And a lot of colleges would have happily welcomed a professional comedian into the dorms to make other students laugh.   

Why the nice tuba player will be just fine

At 6:45 a.m yesterday as I was finishing my morning run at the local high school’s track, the marching band was just making their way to the field to practice their formations.  And the fact that the entire band was walking out together meant that they’d probably arrived even earlier to rehearse inside first.   It wasn’t even 7 a.m. yet, but there were the clarinetists, flutists, saxophonists, percussionists, and a lone tuba player who looked to be a freshman with a tuba almost as large as he was.  Just a bunch of high school kids happy to be there practicing with the marching band before school.

It’s hard not to be impressed when you see nice kids working hard at things they enjoy.   I feel the same way when I see the cross country team out running together during the summer or the kid working behind the counter at the local In-N-Out Burger after school.  Kids and parents should know that your work ethic, curiosity, how you treat other people, how you commit yourself to things that matter to you—those traits, not the name of the college you attend, are what will determine your future success and happiness. 

If you’re a nice kid who works hard, does your best, and plays a mean tuba in the marching band, you’re going to be just fine whether or not Georgetown says yes.