Resume Building

This is Mr. Weber's assembly talk of September 28, 2009.

I’ve been speaking to faculty who’ve been here since the beginning of school and many agree that last week’s homecoming was the best ever. Congratulations to the football team for their 48-9 victory over East Hamilton on Friday night. Please join me in thanking Mrs. Pierpoli, who organized the Friday night homecoming festivities, and Mrs. Weaver, who organized the dance. I also want to thank the student body for joining into the festivities so completely; I thought your nerd day outfits were hilarious and if you haven’t been to the pictures link on our web site there are some really funny shots.

Now that we’re through with homecoming, I want to recommend to you that you begin to take your Christian Service commitment seriously if you haven’t started.

I know, on one level, CSI feels like a burden, another one of the long list of things you must check off to get to the next year. Let me suggest two alternative perspectives.

First, though this was not our motivation for establishing it, it turns out that having 160 hours of service work at a variety of charitable agencies over the course of your four years of high school makes your resume very attractive to colleges. Consider the perspective of the college admissions counselor:

Application #789: 3.8 GPA, 28 on ACT, played basketball and baseball, worked a part-time job. Sounds like a good, solid applicant—except that applicants #1-788 are mind-numbingly similar if you’re the counselor who must read 1,000 applications.

JPII applicant #790: 3.8 GPA, 28 on ACT, basketball and baseball, part time job. In freshman year, tutored under-privileged children after school in program called “Children are People”. In sophomore year, he visited with the elderly at Mary Queen of Angels Nursing home. As a junior, on Saturday mornings, he served food to the homeless in a program called “Loaves and Fishes”. In senior year, he volunteered at Vanderbilt Children’s hospital.

If you’re a college counselor deciding between applicant #789 and JPII applicant #790, applicants with very similar academic records, it’s not even close. Now clearly if we’re only doing Christian Service to pad resumes, we’re not doing it with the right spirit. But as often is the case, doing good thing for others ends up helping us, and it’s OK to acknowledge that.

Of course, the real reason we do Christian service is because Christ asks us to. He tells us “Whatever you do for the least of these, you do unto me.” Despite promises that our happiness is tied to having what we want or doing what we want, the truth is God has programmed us so that we’re really only truly happy when we’re serving others, and he tells us when we do so, we’re serving him.

Along the way, many of you may find yourselves in less than fantastic situations in your commitments to CSI. Perhaps you’re being asked to wash dishes, or sweep floors, or clean up after people. Rather than moan about it, consider it a blessing. Consider it an opportunity to pad the most important resume you’re working on: your application for eternal life.