<p>when the topic of the question is "talk about an activity you participated in outside of your cultural group?</p>
<p>My son is a typical white kid in a middle class, not particularly diverse town. His only experiences outside of his cultural group would be his Mission Trips. How does he make it interesting? Does he focus on a specific event or aspect of the trip? How does he come up with a 'hook' that is different from all the other Mission Trip essays?</p>
<p>He needs to avoid the typical cliches about how the experience changed him and made him a more tolerant person. As a matter of fact, avoid totally any narration about oneself and instead SHOW (think of the paragraphs as movie scenes and describe them). This is a case where outright humor would be a welcome change to the somberness and self-serving language typically used for mission trip essays.</p>
<p>For example, I was on a trip to Romania back when the country was under a strict communist dictatorship. Toilet paper was in extremely short supply and we treasured every square. One day our car broke down on a hilly rural road. As we all jumped out of the car, someone accidentally kicked our last roll of toilet paper out of the car. It not only started rolling rapidly down the steep hill, but it was UNROLLING the whole way down!!! Imagine us - Romanians and Americans alike - running frantically trying to catch the escaping roll while others started from the top of the hill re-rolling the TP back into a new roll, brushing off all the rocks and dirt as they rolled.</p>
<p>But where does that go (we need to see a transition)? The laughter led to a bonding of the American visitors with the Romanian hosts. <== but don’t say that explicitly… SHOW more scenes which allow the reader to DISCOVER that bonding.</p>
<p>—Robert Cronk, author of Concise Advice: Jump-Starting Your College Admissions Essays (Second Edition)</p>
<p>Wow, that was excellent and very helpful. Thank you for taking the time to respond!</p>
Best not to say “mission” in mission trip-related essays. Remember that you’re not being evaluated by 1 person, but by several people & someone on the committee is going to be statistically part of the 50%+ of Americans who loathe missionaries and their activities.
^^ That’s a really interesting statistic, but I couldn’t find it by my google searches. Could you direct me to your source for this statistic?
Adcoms will be savvy to the variety of trips and reasons for them. Often, even trips from churches are about the work and interacting, not saving souls.
Digmedia’s example makes the kid seem open, likable, confident enough to tell that tale. He’s not posing as a hero.
If there isn’t this sort of anecdote, he can also show how the trip changed his perspective at home, how his own efforts changed. “Show, not just tell.”