Some background:
For most of my life, I’ve planned on pursuing a career in the humanities. The only reason for this is because it’s what I was good at. Recently, I’ve had an awakening, and I’ve decided to pursue a career (thus, a college career) in STEM, because despite the fact that I am better at English than I am at math, I am more passionate about the field.
I’m a rising junior, and during my freshman and sophomore years, my ECs were related to humanities. I had essays published in magazines, I was an editor for my school’s literary magazine, I put in a lot of hours volunteering at my local library, I spent a lot of my time reading and writing. I’m only now finishing up an internship that I’ve held for a couple of years at my local government office. (Though, to be fair, it’s really the only internship that a high school student can have where I live.)
I’ve changed gears recently, though. I joined my school’s math club, and I regularly will tutor and assist other students online in math/computer science. I founded a video game club at my local library. I’m an editor and (sort of) contributor for an actual IT magazine published by a family friend. I make games in a little coding/storytelling program called Twine, and I’m currently teaching myself how to develop apps. Starting this year, I’m going to join the National Science Honors Society.
This is a really long-winded way of asking: Should I even mention ECs that are not related to my major? (In this case, Computer Science) I feel like including them will make it seem like I was just doing a lot of things to build an impressive application, but I feel like not including them will make it seem like I did absolutely nothing until my junior year, which was not at all the case.
In all honesty, I was just testing the waters of different fields that I thought I was interested in (writing, journalism, law) but learned that I wasn’t, so I’ve dropped them. I still learned a lot from each of them and they comprised a large part of my high school experience. If I were going to be majoring in something relating to politics/law, I think my government internship would be huge, seeing as it is rare in my city for high schoolers to be accepted into that internship. As a STEM major, it feels like it means much less.