Eco Protectors - Lafayette: What do you do? Why do you do it?

Hey guys! Below is my reply to Lafayette's prompt:
There's a difference between being busy and being engaged. Lafayette comes alive each day with the energy of students who are deeply engaged in their academic, co-curricular and extracurricular explorations. In response to the second prompt, keep it simple - choose one activity and add depth to our understanding of your involvement. What do you do? Why do you do it? (20-200 words)

However, I have used 300 words, and am not sure where to trim the narrative.
Could you please help with that, and also comment on the quality of the essay?
I promise to critique yours in return :)

You know how when you are so passionate about something, you wake up every morning with a smile on your face and a jump in your step, ready to conquer the day? Well, that's not me. Most mornings I wake up groggy and tired from lack of sleep because I was busy planning out the next activity of my club.

In the April of 2010, my best friend from school and I formed Eco Protectors - our attempt to answer the many environmental issues facing our home town. For our first project, we decided to address the problem of rising air pollution by organizing a week-long festival, comprising of an environmental awareness cycle rally, street performances, and culminating in a tree plantation drive. Although we had thought we could easily handle it, the real world difficulties challenged all our learnings. Over the period of two months, we gave multiple presentations to the xyz Municipality, approached private donors for assistance, printed and put up flyers in many apartment buildings, formed a website for publicity, convinced local newspapers and news channels to join our effort, conducted five auditions, and were finally able to gather about fifty volunteers. This was the first big project I had undertaken, and it has taught me a lot of things. I have learnt the value of timely coordination and teamwork, the importance of soft skills and real world experience. I have learnt that no amount of planning will compensate for people's ability to screw things up, but I have also seen the power of belief - if we can communicate our ideas to people in a way that relates to their personal lives, we can turn their apathy into passion, and even turn our staunchest opponents into our closest friends.

First of all, plan is not a phrasal verb and the "out" is unnecessary and sounds strange. I think to get rid of words you have two options:

1. cut out the first part entirely. Although it adds humor, this essay prompt is really only asking you about an extracurricular activity and that is all the college cares about

2. keep the first part but cut out as many unimportant phrases/words as you can, while still making sure the essay flows and makes sense. I can give you tons of examples of words you don't need: many, multiple, over the period of two months...

Also, this sentence left me confused: "Although we had thought we could easily handle it, the real world difficulties challenged all our learnings." Since you never addressed what these problems are, you can delete this sentence.

Good luck!

So if you're going to keep the first part, you're going to have to sacrifice the second part and delete a few of your accomplishments, as impressive as they are. You obviously accomplished a lot so I think if you delete a few it will not detract from all you did.

You know how when you are so passionate about something, you wake up every morning with a smile on your face and a jump in your step, ready to conquer the day? Well, that's not me. Most mornings I wake up groggy and tired from lack of sleep because I was busy planning the next activity of our club.

I cut a lot out but if its still over, like I said, cut out some of your accomplishments. Also, since it says it's informal, I think you'd be okay putting I've

Hey!
Thanks so much Madeline! You got it down to 220, and I think I'll cut down on some of our activities to get it down to 210.

Bdw, could you give your frank opinion: on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the best), how would you rate this essay?
That'll help me decide whether or not I should rewrite the entire thing, because frankly I am not very happy with it.

And for anyone wishing to help me, here is the updated version:

I'd give it a 7. I mean you're righting about an extracurricular in 200 words, right? I don't think they're expecting any pulitzer prize winning writing. Try writing it without the first part and expand about your passion for the environment. See how that sounds then choose from the two. Honestly, I think the first part takes up words that could be used, well, bragging about yourself--which is what you're supposed to do! Thanks for reading my other essay by the way :)

Thank you Ryxion! As always, your posts have been quite helpful.
I'll try to rewrite this in a way that makes it feel more personal.

Until then, does anyone have any more suggestions?

Sure no problem! Can you help out with my yale essay? I know you gave some comments already, they're very helpful! So i hope you can continue as you mentioned haha

Ryxion
It looks like you are done!
Good luck man.

YOUR essay is too long. the admission folks have so many essays to read, try and introduce some metaphors to make it catchy. good luck

Change to "Over a period of two months"