Non-clinical volunteer experience

[Mars41]

I came to my involvement with community outreach through my love for the sport of surfing. I have spent thousands of hours volunteering for my community through organizing toy drives, taking pro surfers to visit children's hospitals, helping to develop programs for the Florida school of the deaf and blind, Special Olympics, and the Wounded Warriors project. I organized countless beach cleanups and I was the district director of a non-profit with 300 members in my district and 7000 members nationwide.

I LOVED volunteering and lived my life for it. But I did all this as a SURFER. Nothing special I know. Will this be looked down upon on my med school applications? It's hard to explain that my best way to help people during that time was because of my surfing skills but it's the truth.

Also how do I document actual hours spent? It was a lifestyle. I wasn't walking around with a pen saying "oh!!! I just earned another hour for a good deed."? Any advice for med applications???

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[QofQuimica]

Surfing is a sport, and that's the angle I'd play it. You were an athlete (maybe semi-pro?) who competed and volunteered in that context. There's nothing to look down on you for there. Though hopefully you weren't surfing primarily here in FL; we don't have very good surf.

If you don't know hours spent, you'll have to estimate. Just do the best you can. No one is going to check up to see if you're half an hour off one way or the other, but you probably didn't spend ten million hours volunteering, so be realistic and give a ballpark figure. For example, if you did a monthly beach cleanup, half a day each time, that is four hours x 12 times per year, giving approximately fifty hours per year x however many years. And so on.

I'd also suggest getting a LOR from someone from your nonprofit. This should be a person who was involved with running the nonprofit and saw the level of effort you put in, can attest to your volunteering/character/dedication, etc.

 

[Mars41]

Thanks for the advice QofQ. Very helpful.