The Average Joe Activity 

I want you to write all of the activities that you plan to be involved in for the next year. And this includes absolutely everything. 

The next thing I want you to do is to imagine a friend.

We’ll call him "Average Joe." This is what he's currently doing:

• Plays in the band;

• On student council;

• Member of seven other clubs;

• Takes average classes and gets good grades;

• Participates in summer camps and costly clubs.

I want you to look at your list of activities, and I want you to put a checkmark next to the activities that could also be done by our friend, "Average Joe."

Remember John vs. Jordan, Ivy vs. Iris, & Sharon vs. Ishita? 

The thing that made Jordan, Iris, and Ishita stand out was how surprising and memorable their main activity was. 

None of the "Average Joe Activities" will help you stand out.

This can be a painful discovery. Especially if you are a junior by the time you read this guide. 

You may have spent a lot of time accumulating Average Joe activities. But the pain you feel now upon realizing this wasted time is small compared to the pain of discovering this at the end of senior year when admissions decisions come back. 

Iris shifted her strategy at the end of her junior year, and you know how that worked out. 

It’s not too late for you either. 

But if you are in 8th, 9th, or 10th grade when you learn this, you’re in luck. You can avoid countless hours of misery. 

Should I quit every activity that is an average Joe activity? 

ABSOLUTELY NOT! There are still several scenarios when those average Joe activities are valuable and will help you get in.

For example, those activities can help you if they align with your core values and they complete that picture that you're telling the admissions officer about who you are and what you stand for.

Average Joe activities might be fun for you, and they might recharge your internal batteries, making it easier for you to use your willpower and self-discipline on the classes you don’t love. If you have enough time, it might be worth it to stay in activities you enjoy, just to have a break once in a while.

Or these activities might be opportunities for you to network with people who can help you create a real impact.

There are a number of reasons to continuing doing activities that don’t explicitely help you stand out in your application. 

Allow me to go a little tangent to make this point here: 

I remember when I was in 2nd grade, a friend of mine who was in 3rd grade saw the homework I was doing, and said to me

“OH! I wish I could go back to 2nd grade when the homework was THAT EASY! Ooh, you’d better work hard now, because 3rd grade is coming…”

You may have had someone say something similar to you. 

At the end of elementary school, all of the teacher start saying things like

“you’d better work hard, because middle school is coming…”

And in middle school, teachers say

“you’d better work really hard, because high school is coming…”

Then throughout high school, everyone around you is probably saying

“you’d better work really, really hard, because … college is coming…!”

The problem here, is that this message implies that the important stuff– whatever it is– is in front of you.

You’d better work really hard now so that when life matters, you’ll be ready for it. 

But I reject that idea. 

Life didn’t ‘begin’ when you transitioned from elementary school to middle school, or from middle school to high school.

And life doesn’t begin when you transition to college. 

In fact, when you get to college, guess what you are going to hear? People will say

“you’d better work really hard, because medical school/law school/graduate school/ is coming…” 

Or

“you’d better work really hard, because the real world (your first job) is coming…”

And plenty of people buy into that train of thought.

Plenty of people live their lives working really, really hard, because the important stuff is about to begin. 

They are alive, but not really living. 

Often this mindset continues until a tragedy occurs in the family, or until a midlife crisis wakes them up from the trance. 

But I believe that life begins when you figure out your core values.

Once you take this step, you can begin aligning your choices around these values.

This can begin in high school. Even during the busiest period of high school. While everyone else is making decisions based on what will win them the loudest applause or the biggest trophy, you can make choices based on what matters most to you. 

Ironically, people who make choices aligned with their core values instead of based on whatever they think admissions officers will be the most impressed with end up being far more memorable and far more impressive to admissions officers. Iris’ case study demonstrates this.

With that in mind, let’s talk about how you can do what Iris did, and get her results.