I worked at a Hospital and I wanted to include it in the extracurricular section of the common app. It has to be 150 words or fewer... I'm at 192... I'm not sure what to cut, what to add, I kind of messed an old essay into this one. Help???
Over the summer you could find me behind the front desk of (name of Hospital). My job was to answer phone calls, look up patients names, and walk people to their destinations. I learned so much while working: humility, respect, empathy. It was not my right as a volunteer to judge that walked up to me by first impressions. By meeting so many different people I went from shy underclassmen to mature young adult. I learned a lot about the complexities of each person's character. Older people needed you to sometimes write down the room number of their loved one, because they might come back to the desk laughing about how they forget the number. Some people might be stressed out because they need their medical records in the basement to file a claim. While other people are in a jolly good mood because their sister had a baby in the maternity ward and they need a number to order flowers. The hospital has a wide variety of different moods coming in and out in the form of people. It's a volunteers job to greet each and every one of the visitors positively.
Over the summer you could find me behind the front desk of (name of Hospital). My job was to answer phone calls, look up patients names, and walk people to their destinations. I learned so much while working: humility, respect, empathy. It was not my right as a volunteer to judge that walked up to me by first impressions. By meeting so many different people I went from shy underclassmen to mature young adult. I learned a lot about the complexities of each person's character. Older people needed you to sometimes write down the room number of their loved one, because they might come back to the desk laughing about how they forget the number. Some people might be stressed out because they need their medical records in the basement to file a claim. While other people are in a jolly good mood because their sister had a baby in the maternity ward and they need a number to order flowers. The hospital has a wide variety of different moods coming in and out in the form of people. It's a volunteers job to greet each and every one of the visitors positively.
