"Late Bloomer"?

Applying to College
1

<p>As all of you seniors are stressing over on your college essays, I have a junior-year question :)... I like to call myself a "late bloomer" because I've been a bit of an introvert until the end of sophomore year. Speech team and mock trial helped me break out of my "shell" around the middle of sophomore year. I'm thankful to this day that a friend of mine recommended that I joined these 2 things several months ago :P! I've also come to realize that I'm a sucker for science, and although I don't love math as much, I like to scribble in my AoPS book and whatnot. Anyway, now that I feel much more confident in myself, I've joined and started a few things. However, I--by no means--want to come off as a dilettante. I try to put as much love into everything I do, and I usually will take it off my sleep if I feel a need to put more effort into something. I sometimes will doze off in classes (it's starting to happen in Chemistry because I self-studied AP Chemistry over the summer...and the "most rigorous" Chemistry class my school offers is a diluted version of Chemistry), but I've learned to survive with minimal sleep. </p>

<p>Now, the really big question is... I'm tryyyying to push for one more extracurricular: math team. After some self-studying in the summer (haha, yes, I spent a lot of my summer doing science and math related), I've found a bit of joy whenever I understand things like telescoping series. Do you guys think I should go for it? In total, I'll be joining like 4 things this year, but I don't want to come off as a resume-padder. I feel like I've made enough of an impact in going to the gym (I beat diabetes and am encouraging my family to, in a sense), and I'll definitely continue going there, but I want to explore the world, explore the new nerdy yet extrovert person in me :)</p>

<p>Thanks all.</p>

<p>Edit: I'm inevitably bound to go over the 10 activities cap on the CommonApp if that adds some more information.</p>

2

<p>If you have a genuine interest, I’d say go for it, and drop anything if it starts affecting your GPA. </p>

3

<p>@ghostalgic‌ I think I’ll be able to pull through. Honestly, most of my classes are very easy (since I did a loooot over the summer). I don’t want to sound arrogant or anything, but when you self-study AP Chemistry over the summer (or anything like that), it’s all in how fast you can do homework in class ;)! I have a few classes that fall in the “busy work” category, but they’re definitely not insanely stressful. However, I’ll almost certainly be doing USABO and maybe USChO. I’m also debating on whether to do some physics (just for the fun of it and maybe even take the Physics 1 test). We’ll see what happens, though! Thanks for the feedback :D!</p>