<p>I wrote the common app short answer, can someone please give me editing suggestions and shortening ideas because the limit is 1000 characters (about 160 words) and I wrote about 1,195 (200 words) Much thanks in advance!</p>
<p>Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work expereince in the space below (1000 character maximum).</p>
<p>In my sophomore year of high school I joined my schools newspaper and quickly developed a profound passion for journalism and for being a voice for the student body. I started as a staff writer and gained valuable experience writing articles, conducting interviews and selling advertisement to help fund our paper. Throughout the year, not only did I witness my journalistic skills improve drastically, but I also found and interest in writing feature articles. I thus spent my first year as a journalism student writing various articles featuring students who had endured hardships in their lives including drug usage, being a student in a foreign country and teen pregnancy. Having the opportunity to sit down and interview these students at my high school was important to me because I felt that it was important to raise awareness about all sorts of different issues that were not only occurring globally, but also in our very own high school. Now as Editor-In-Chief of the paper, while my responsibilities range from delegating stories to managing the overall design of the newspaper, my hope is that I am able to instill in my current staff the same passion I have for journalism in them.</p>