I live in the suburb of Los Angeles, California, known to its residents as the bubble. It has the perfect weather, location, and schools. As amazing as it sounds, however, growing up in La Cañada Flintridge has its drawbacks: the community pressures adolescents to achieve success through mainly academic means. While this approach isn’t necessarily wrong, it can be difficult, particularly in my high school, to thrive in a creative and imaginative way.
Sophomore year, my friends and I began to wonder, What if the teenagers of La Cañada had greater opportunities to express themselves. To pursue their creativity. To follow their dreams.
That’s when we decided to start the Catalyzing Creativity Club.
Founded two years ago, the Catalyzing Creativity Club (C3, for short), provides students in our community the opportunity to pursue their passion and aspirations outside the classroom.
Some of our opportunities include: a yearly music festival for our community’s young aspiring musicians that showcases local talent to the masses and scouts; a technology expo, which allows students to be rewarded with funding and demonstrate their coding abilities to prospective companies; recording sessions for aspiring musicians, photo-publishing competitions, and a variety of guest speakers ranging from nineteen-year-old college seniors to millionaire entrepreneurs. In addition, we have a blog for aspiring writers to publish their work and are holding a shoe drive for underprivileged athletes.
As vice president of finances for C3, I work to ensure we can fund these activities. I handle our bank account, fundraising, and organize the event planning. Moreover, I make sure that C3’s activities and finances are approved by and follow the guidelines of my high school. This role is crucial, as we work to achieve non-profit status.
Even though C3 is only a few years old, I believe it is already making an impact in the community. As we grow and the opportunities we provide become more popular, our hope is to inspire our peers to follow their dreams and burst the La Cañada Flintridge bubble. (332 words)
Brief Notes and Analysis of this Essay
- Check out how the third paragraph is basically a straightforward listing of the club’s accomplishments. This was pulled directly from the bullet points of his BEABIES exercise. (See above for more.) It works.
- Notice how specific he gets in the fourth paragraph where he clarifies why he was essential to the club’s success. Doing this helps us understand that he was more than just a passive participant who showed up to meetings.
- Another potential use of your extracurricular essay is to expand on something you only mentioned briefly in your personal statement. In this case, the author mentioned in his personal statement that he’s “a numbers guy” and the fourth paragraph in this essay expands on why numbers are meaningful to him.
- If he’d had more room, he could have potentially expanded in the final paragraph on the club’s impact, describing specific ways the community changed, or personal lessons learned. But again, not every essay has to be perfect (and not every element has to be included) in order for this structure to work.