Here is my rough draft for the Amherst Supplement essay. Please tell me your opinion. Feel free to tear it apart.
"Difficulty need not foreshadow despair or defeat. Rather achievement can be all the more satisfying because of obstacles surmounted."
Attributed to William Hastie, Amherst Class of 1925, first African-American to serve as a judge for the United States Court of Appeals
Elected as the Best Buddies vice president whose chief responsibility was membership recruitment, I knew before junior year even started that I can expect a challenging year ahead of me. Best Buddies was a brand new club founded on campus during my sophomore year, and from observing the lack of involved members in the previous year, I realized that my recruitment effort would be critical to the successful management of Best Buddies in the future years.
Since students at our school tend to only join the "big" clubs, I knew I had to start early. By early September, advertisements in the school morning announcements promoting Best Buddies could be heard everywhere on campus. I also convinced the Best Buddies adviser to allow us to use some of the money that we raised from the successful fundraisers last year to provide free pizza for our members at the meetings. To my disappointment, still only a small handful of students came to the meetings. At the end of one meeting, as I stacked the boxes of uneaten pizza, I pledged to myself that I would not allow my initial failures to discourage my recruitment effort.
I began to brainstorm new ideas to recruit members. By the following week, I had engaged all the other officers to help establish our membership base. We posted gigantic hand-shaped posters around campus and walked up to every single lunch table to convince students to join. I also organized social activities with other officers to encourage our members to bring their friends. Finally, I arranged with ASB and got all the Best Buddies officers to dance at the quad during lunch to get the attention from the student body. These techniques soon showed powerful results. By the end of my junior year, the Best Buddies membership soared and became the third largest club on campus.
At the Best Buddies End of the Year Party, as I watched the crowds of people socializing, eating, and fighting over the muffins, a sense of satisfaction came to me. Our successful recruitment taught me that difficulty need not result in despair but should instead incite a stronger determination to conquer the difficulty. In the face of difficulty, I chose to surmount it instead of surrendering to it. As I sipped the hot cocoa and glanced at the social scene, I knew for certain that next year's Best Buddies chapter will be bound to a great start.
