Community service at the Morant Bay Infirmary; Extracurricular activity

The prompt for the Short Answer on the Common Application states, "Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences in the space below (1,000 character maximum)."

Assisting others and working in a medical environment is a passion of mine. Over the years in High School, I performed community service at the Morant Bay Infirmary. When performing community service, I contemplated the future challenges ahead. My anxiety rose during the orientation, when we were told not to get impatient with the patients and treat them with the respect they deserve and show appropriate behavior. Gradually, after difficult training, I began to adore working at the infirmary and the many people there. Initially, I didn't think the patients would have such a great impact on me. However, many of the older patients reminded me of my grandparents. I was born in the United States, and raised in Jamaica, which meant not fully knowing my grandparents, who were in India. Sadly, because of several communication problems, and other barriers, we were only able to talk a few times a year. However, working around the patients helped make up for the lost time with my grandparents. I really enjoyed my experience working there over the years because I believe I was able to make a difference in their lives as much as they did mine. There is no doubt that working in this Infirmary has indeed furthered my intense interest to focus my career in the medical field.

They need 1000 characters and mine goes over, could someone help me out and in any way shorten specific aspects. Thanks in advance much appreciated.

supreeth97
Am not whether you understand what you wrote. You said you want atleast 1000 character but if you count the word you wrote you get 231 characters? Its either i am wrong or i you dont understand what you wrote

1000 characters is what is required, the word, yes total to 218, but characters are different. They're like the spaces commas and such

It's good if you tell all these things through your own experiences. That way your claims would be more convincing. Also, you do not talk much about the activities you were involved. Your prompt sounds like they need to know all those stuff;


Tell them what you learned through this experience that has a lasting impact on you as a person.