This is the prompt:
1. Referring back to Section B or C of this application, choose one of your extracurricular activities, employment or community experiences and describe why it has been especially meaningful to you (e.g., because of personal growth, ability to assume or share responsibility).
Going The Extra Mile
"Whenever someone asks you for help with something, you always go the extra mile."
The missions team was going around telling one another encouragements on the last night of missions, and this was what my youth pastor told me. As I reflected on myself, I realized that I had only started acting this way recently.
When my pastor had announced that the signups for Mexico missions was open, I immediately decided that I wanted to go. I had never gone on a missions trip before and was curious to experience Mexico missions. Because I am the worship leader for my church's youth group congregation, my pastor asked me to lead the worship on the missions trip. I agreed, not knowing the amount of work it would take. I usually lead with guitar and sing every Friday and Sunday, and I come two hours earlier to practice with the worship band. I thought that was a lot of work, but by the end of the missions trip in Mexico, I was dead tired.
One of the problems with me going to missions was the question of who would lead the worship back at my church. We would be gone for ten days, so there would be three services that I would miss. However, the only problem was who would lead because most of the worship team would still be there. That was where my other difficulty arose. I needed to form a worship band with people who did not play an instrument regularly. Almost all of the other people on the youth worship team had conflicts and could not go on the missions trip. I had no idea how I was going to pull this together. The only worship band members who were also going to missions were the backup bass player and the keyboard player. I could play all of the instruments in a band so I decided that I would teach the other instruments to people who were willing to do it.
First, I had to find a drummer. One of my friends who was also going on the missions trip had a drumset that he played once in a while. I asked him if he was willing to play drums, and he said yes. For the next couple of weeks, I gave him the songs for him to try and learn, and the Saturday before we went to Mexico, we met up and practiced. For ten hours, I taught him drums while battling a fever. Luckily for me, one of my friends was pretty good at electric guitar and he happened to be going on the missions trip also so all I had to do was give him the songs to learn and make sure he knew them.
When people write about missions, for them, the hard stuff is usually things like the construction work, and I'm not saying those things are not hard. But for me, having to lead the worship was definitely the hardest part. There was just so much preparation and work that I had to put in. Every morning and night, the missions team would have meetings, and I would have to play three to four songs. Then there was the evangelizing. We went out every day for about an hour in the local community. I would play the guitar and the other members of the missions team sang the songs. During the evangelizing, I had some bad luck. I forgot to bring an extra set of strings and the B string on the acoustic guitar broke around the third day. For the rest of the time, I had to play with a missing string, and my fingers were dead. Because I had to play so much guitar, my calluses were getting re-callused each day. My fingers felt like it felt when I had just started playing guitar, but with one difference - I could not take breaks when they hurt!
This may not be the typical thing to write about going to the missions field, but this is how it was meaningful to me. I could've put a lot less preparation into the worship, with a much worse result, or I could've even declined to do it. I didn't have to spend countless hours teaching other people instruments and could've just opted to lead worship on just the acoustic guitar. But once I accepted it, no matter how grueling and tiresome it was, I put in 100 percent. Although it wasn't a picture perfect memory, in the end, I managed to finish it all with some success. All of the preparation and hard work that I had to do, allowed me to grow as a person. On this missions trip, I had to overcome so many obstacles and there were some things I could not change, and I realized that's how life is. There will be times when things don't go my way and I will have to adapt. No matter how much preparation I go through, nothing goes according to plan. Yet, if I go the extra mile and try my best, I know that I will still feel a sense of accomplishment.
I feel like it's kind of boring, and I think my conclusion doesn't really match my introduction.
PLEASE HELP!!
THANKS!!!
I am new to UnderGrad Essays but one thing I learned is: The Admission Committee asks the essay so they can know YOU better with information that your application cannot convey. Yes, you went the extra mile like the title says but in my opinion they are not interested in knowing how your missions trip went but instead they really want to know about you! What I want to mean is: The idea of a story is nice but along with it, write about how you were growing and changing with your challenges not just make a paragraph with all your changes. Take some time, listen to some songs, relax and improve your essay. I'm not saying that it's bad but in order to be admitted you need to be UNIQUE!
Hope it helps,
Alex
