I was elected as the director of publicity for the student government during my senior year of high school. The title was much fancier than the actual job. In the days before the Internet, the best way to promote school events—homecoming, talent shows, sports, etc.—was to paint signs on butcher paper and tape them around the school. I was the lone sign-painting and-taping guy.
That was the entirety of my student government role. And it was not a glamorous gig.
Nobody at our school had ever known or cared who the director of publicity was for one reason—the signs always promoted the popular events that didn’t actually need more publicity. There were signs promoting every Friday night football game. Signs were out in force when homecoming tickets went on sale. And when the yearbooks were finally available to be picked up, you couldn’t turn a corner on campus without seeing a sign.
But those events didn’t need a publicity boost, and the signs promoting them had become so commonplace that nobody even bothered to notice them, much less give credit to the lowly director of publicity.
So I devised a strategy to become the most celebrated sign-maker in school history—I promoted groups and events that never got any recognition. Each sign appealed to only a small audience, but I reasoned that those tiny audiences would be especially thankful for my efforts.
When our boys’ cross country team won the league championship, they arrived at school the next day to a large sign congratulating all of them by name.
The drama department’s opening night of Grease got a big promotion courtesy of the student government’s official sign-maker.
The academic decathlon, the orchestra, even the Rugby Club (which only had four members but somehow recruited teammates from other schools so they could enter a tournament)—it didn’t take long before I was getting effusive thanks from every previously under-promoted group on campus. In fact, the captains of the cross country team wrote a letter to our faculty advisor telling him how much they appreciated my congratulatory signage.
What I did was not difficult or creative. Anybody could have done my job (nobody ever accused my signs of having any artistic merit behind them).
But I was willing to make a different choice than my publicity predecessors had made.
I could do the job as everyone before me had always done it. But that guaranteed that I would work in relative obscurity, with no appreciation in return and little chance that my work would be missed when I graduated.
Or I could do the job differently, filling a need for people who would benefit from and appreciate it, and maybe even get some recognition for a historically unremarkable job.
The work would be the same, but only one path led where the work was needed.
Students today are feeling a lot of pressure to best the competition—better grades, higher test scores, more accolades, bigger awards, better, better, better. There’s nothing wrong with aiming high and working hard, but you can’t out-achieve every applicant in every facet of the college admissions process.
A different and often more effective way to make an impact, to do work that’s appreciated, and maybe even get more accolades is to go where you’re needed. What’s not getting done that needs to get done? Who isn’t being served by your club or office or position, and who would notice if you paid attention? What could you do that would make a difference, one that might seem small to others, but would be big to the people who benefitted?
The path to where you’re needed is often a lot less crowded than the path of what’s always been done before.