As my college application deadlines draw closer, I am struck by the number of times I have been asked to define myself by my activities or a short answer essay. Between listing activities for applications, limited to only seven activities as though the rest don’t matter, to creating a resume for my teachers to write recommendations from, I find myself discouraged by this method.

Listing my activities doesn’t tell someone who I am. Writing a short answer about why I have chosen a particular school at Boston University tells the reader nothing about why I should be admitted to the university. One of my top choices, the accelerated medical school program at NEOUCOM, allowed only a 1,350-character response to the prompt of why I feel I would make a good medical student. That’s 1,350 letters, spaces included, to say why I deserve entrance into this selective program.

Although I have a solid list of activities to back up this meager response, there are aspects of my life that my activities don’t reflect.

Knowing that I coach a seventh and eighth grade volleyball team doesn’t tell someone that I am a dedicated, even occasionally, patient person. Reading that I am the editor-in-chief of the paper doesn’t explain that I can stay organized and get a paper finished on deadline. This doesn’t tell them that I know how to use the computer for layout. And this single sentence stating that I am the editor of the paper doesn’t explain why some of my other activities have dropped off this year.

But most of all, a simple list doesn’t show my personality or intangibles. My activities don’t tell admissions officers that I’m close to God, that sometimes I’m crazy, that I live off of stress and that I don’t know how to function with spare time.

They don’t explain that I love my brother with all my heart or that I enjoy watching Star Trek on mute with Jack Johnson playing on my iPod because, well, it just makes a better soundtrack.

Essays are supposed to offer us the chance to talk about ourselves, but some of them are so specific that it doesn’t offer any opportunity to digress, or the length is so limited that I can’t fully explain why, in fact, I have “no fun ever.” For the record, this is because I am always so stressed with school, college applications, coaching, work or retreat team.

Maybe that doesn’t make any difference. In the end, it probably doesn’t matter. I can get into college somewhere, become a doctor and spend the rest of my life filling out resumes, once again defining myself by a list of activities, jobs and internships. Perhaps colleges don’t care that everything I do, I put my whole heart into.