| madeinusa817...
If you don't mind, I'll give an example of a good EC. Northstarmom, would you mind to comment on it?
Before I give the recount of it, I'd like to point out that this was one of my EC's during high school. (Albeit an important one that was important to me though certainly not the only one) I am also already in college, so I'm not posting this to get my "chances" nor am I posting this for any other reason than giving an example of what I think is a good EC. (This is stated without any form of arrogance.)
During my high school years, because of the cutting of arts funds, the annual spring musical's budget was cut down to only $1,000-$2,000. For those who don't know, it is quite difficult to put on any kind of show of any quality with that amount of money. For small rural schools, such a budget for the annual musical may mean a lot; however, for my school (which is a large urban high school with a rich tradition of putting on high quality productions), the cut was hit the production badly. Our district, like many large urban schools, did not have very strong parent involvement. Therefore, funding the money from "rich parents" was out of the question.
I was involved with the Drama department starting from my freshman year; when we were hit with this news in my sophomore year, it was quite devastating for many people in the club. At first, we thought the production was not going to go on; however, the two drama directors decided (out of the goodness of their heart) to work with the students without pay. We had some vo-tech teachers (home-ec, sewing and wood shop) who were willing to make the costumes and sets with their students- again with limited resources. The biggest problem came when be couldn't hire the pit orchestra musicians. Normally, the pit was made up of part students and part hired-professional musicians and was conducted/directed by the band director. My sophomore year, a new, younger band director came and was unwilling to do the production without pay. (Reasonable and understandable)
Well, I did something that was quite unprecedented: I asked the directors if I could recruit musicians for the pit and rehearse them as well. It would consist of entirely student musicians (except for the vocal director on keyboards) and I ended up conducting the production in my SOPHOMORE year. With more experience, I did the same thing in my junior year. Because I had some matters during my senior year that took up a lot of my time, I abdicated from the position, and that year, the vocal director conducted from the piano. The pit however, was still comprised of student. I continued to do some backstage work for the production that took less time so I was able to dedicate more time to what I needed to do that year.
My point is, a fulfilling and "decent" activity need not be outside of your own high school. I was extremely glad for the rare opportunity to do what I did, I learned a lot from it and I thoroughly enjoyed the 3 sleepless months in those two years.
When I took volunteered, it was completely because I wanted to learn how to conduct. I wanted to imrpove musically and I thought it would be fun. It never occured to me it would be one of the strong parts of my college application, which was quite a happy accident. |