Penn State Personal Statement - 'activities or experience'

"Please choose one of your activities or another experience you would like to share and provide a short description of its importance to you. Include why that commitment could be relevant to your student experience at Penn State."

The limit is 1200 characters including spaces, which I am at exactly.

How is this? I now have 43 available characters to use.

"Marketplace" is a Christian day camp that my church hosts every summer. Fabricated off of volunteer work and interminable effort, Marketplace serves as a sanctuary for young children during their quest to find God.

I was persuaded to give the Marketplace a try, and so I decided to take part and become one of the "leaders." Almost immediately I was seen as a role model to the younger kids. By tending to their needs, they treated me as an adult. They confided their feelings in me, telling me of their hopes, wishes, and concerns, ecstatic that I would give them the time of day.

By teaching them about religion in a fun, no-boundaries way, their attitudes had changed. They listened to their daily lessons with open ears, and open hearts. I felt enlightened. Who would have known that just a few hours of my time could have such a profound affect on people?

From that day on, my priorities were reversed. I went from fulfilling my needs to fulfilling the needs of others. My desire to be active in a community will greatly benefit my peers at Penn State. I now strive to make others happy, for seeing a smile in return is the best reward I can ask for.

This is a waste of your few precious allowed characters. Cut this and use the characters to say in more detail what you did at the Marketplace.

"Fabricated" doesn't quite work here. Revise.


This is a dangling modifier, unless you want to say that they, in treating their own needs, also treated you as an adult. I suspect you mean, though, that you, in treating their needs, found that they responded to you as an adult.


This sounds a touch arrogant. Perhaps you could rephrase, avoiding the use of the word "ecstatic."

Thanks, I'll fix all of that.
When I said ecstatic, I was trying to show that they were happy an "older" person put in time to listen to them. Not necessarily me personally. I just didn't want to use the word "happy."

wow. Whatever I was about to comment on, Simone already did it and pretty much said what I was about to :o

Anyways, here is some other stuff that I found.


^Why did you feel enlightened? Or even better. How?
If anything, I would have assumed it was the children who felt enlightened?
Also, it is 'effect' on people.
And who knows that is even a profound effect? Revise, cause otherwise, it sounds as if you are flattering yourself, even though you are talking about the preaching of spirituality and religion, which I believe advocate modesty.


^Best reward? I liked your previous sentence, but I do not think that this final one does justice.