@bomerr - I’ve never stepped foot on a sports field, gone on a mission trip, worked at a soup kitchen, founded a club, or participated in the popularity contest known as “student government.”
My ECs consisted of:
- Volunteering and research at local environmental/scientific organizations (two, to be exact)
- Serving as assistant editor of a small newsletter
- Being an assistant counselor at an outdoors summer camp to teach kids about natural sciences, and helping prepare some of their teaching materials
That’s it. Note that only one of these activities could possibly qualify as “leadership,” a buzzword thrown around so haphazardly that I am beginning to wonder if people have forgotten what forms it actually takes in the wild (hint: it’s not always the most visible one).
You know how many sappy essays admissions officers get swamped with about how much the student “learned to appreciate their own opportunities” by slumming it up with some inner-city kids just to say they did it? How they learned so much from the “poor but happy” foreigners they built houses for in their mission trip to Africa? How much hard work it really turned out to be managing a yearbook? How they managed to score that winning touchdown against Rival High because they “played as a team?” Way too many. OP needs more diversified experience to draw his essay from and make his application stand out, but it needs to come from a genuine place.