My favorite EC is my part-time job...does this mean I have to BS on my app?

Applying to College
1

<p>Heya, I'm filling out applications, and some of them ask me to elaborate on the extracurricular that is most important to me. Hands down, my favorite EC is my part-time job as a cashier at a supermarket, but I'm aware that this doesn't sound very impressive. </p>

<p>I do indeed have many other EC's that I've participated in, like clubs, Civil War Reenacting, and whatnot, but I definitely do not feel as strongly about them as I do about my job. </p>

<p>And for you skeptics who don't understand what cashiering has done for me:
I truly enjoy being a cashier because it has taught me some of the most valuable lessons that I hadn't learned from school. I'm a very shy and introverted person, and my job helped me come out of my shell and learn how to talk to people who weren't the same age or taking the same classes as I was. If it weren't for my job, I never would have felt comfortable during college interviews, where you pretty much sit in a room with a stranger and talk. Also, it's sort of embarrassing to admit, but, because of people skills and nervousness, I definitely wasn't the best cashier to begin with. I learned from my mistakes, though, and have since worked my way up to a promotion. This has taught me how to deal with not being good at something from the start. I had never believed the phrase "You don't have to be good to start, but you have to start to be good" until my job. Sure, cashiering is not the most difficult task in the world, but it can be frustrating if you really want to do it well. Anyway, my first inclination when I'm not good at something is to dumb myself down and confidently not excel. But you can't do that when you've got customers to assist, and I learned fast how to take my mistakes in stride and truly attempt to get better.</p>

<p>SO ANYWAY, with all of that being said, would I be able to pull off naming my job as my favorite EC? Or should I just BS another one? </p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

2

<p>Write about your job. I think it is highly important to show passion through writing about your ECs, you'll do a better job of that with your true favorite EC. Your summary in this post is great, even if you just edit what you have here it could make a great EC essay.</p>

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<p>If you can be as passionate about what it's done for you in your essay as you did in your post, I say go for it.</p>

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<p>I like it. I think Adcom types will like it too. No sense of entitlement here. Definitely use it.</p>

5

<p>"Hands down, my favorite EC is my part-time job as a cashier at a supermarket, but I'm aware that this doesn't sound very impressive. "</p>

<p>The colleges ask those kind of questions to find out about your values, work ethic, character, interests, etc. It's not the choice of EC that matters to them, but your reasoning behind why it's important to you.</p>

<p>BS if you want, but realize that the real reasons why you love your favorite EC may be exactly why the college adcoms love you enough to admit you. And if they don't feel that way, you'd be better off going some place where adcoms want students like you.</p>

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<p>Thanks for helping me come to my senses, guys.</p>

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<p>You might consider writing about your part-time job in your essay (I did). If you make it interesting or funny, it will certainly say a lot more about you than another essay about going to a Third-World Country blah blah blah.</p>