In last week’s newsletter to college counselors, the office of undergraduate admissions at Vanderbilt University offered the following bit of wisdom:
Involvement matters. Sure – your applicant’s extracurricular charts will look different in coming years. No future applicant will have had the lead in the school musical in spring 2020. No one will be regional tennis champ in spring 2020; no one will have won an election for junior class officer in spring 2020. But that doesn’t mean they won’t be making impacts in the new environment. Some applicants will actually have time to play music, create, read for pleasure, or develop new and interesting hobbies. Some will find themselves with increasing family responsibilities or the need to undertake a part-time job. Regardless of the circumstances your students find themselves in, we’ll understand. It all goes back to context. How future applicants cope with this period of pandemic will certainly be a topic on which we will read many essays in the coming years. Reassure your students that we get it. We understand. And we can’t expect extracurricular activities grids to look the same in the near future.
Trust colleges to get it. We’re going through unprecedented times for which there are no guidelines, no prescribed course of action, no tips and tricks. But that is not an excuse to retreat to our corners and binge watch The Tiger King. If there’s a gift in any of this, it’s the gift of time. Time to develop a skill, read a book, learn something new, connect with people you care about, or help others. For the past few weeks, every Friday I’ve been emailing my students with suggestions about how they might choose to spend their time productively. A few are making CDC compliant masks to give to first responders, one is recording audiobooks, and others are taking classes online in the areas they plan to major in college to see if it is a topic they really are interested in. And I’m so proud of how they are helping their parents care for younger siblings and lending a hand around the house.
I think that it’s useful for students to ask themselves if they had to account for how they spent their time during this quarantine period, would they be proud of their answer? Would they think that they had used their time wisely, to a good end? We have several more weeks ahead of us, possibly months, and I encourage everyone to use this time productively not just to impress colleges, but because how we choose to spend time for which we are not otherwise held accountable says a lot about our character. And, in the end, that is what truly matters.