Waitressing on a Whim by Emma

Waitressing on a Whim by Emma - December 2022 Scholarship Essay

I’ve always been shy. I won “Most Responsible” twice in middle school solely because I was quiet and did my homework, and was easily forgotten by the boisterous popular kids in my classes. Twice a year my parents would return from parent-teacher conferences with the news that my teachers wished I would talk more, and every day I urged myself to speak up, but never did. Being shy was my personality – who I’d always been, and who I’d grown into despite my parent’s considerable efforts to introduce me to the world when I was younger in the hopes that I would be more outgoing than they were as children.
This past summer, I finally found the strength to conquer my shyness. On a whim, I applied for a waitressing job at a local camp with the objective of getting out of my comfort zone, since interacting with strangers for eight hours a day seemed like the most efficient way to achieve that. I didn’t expect to like the job, or even to be good at it (just to save money for college), but by the end of the summer, I cried when guests I had spent a week serving departed, and proudly explained to anyone that would listen what I had spent the summer doing.
I entered waitressing scared – the same shy girl I had been at school two hours before – and an hour after I walked through the dining room door for the first time, I was thrown into the chaos, assigned my own tables and taking orders, which didn’t do much to reassure me. My first table consisted of four very drunk Polish men, and as I shakily explained the menu, I kicked myself for being so awkward – too nervous to make jokes, barely stable enough to carry a drink tray. The first weekend I struggled through each table, trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing and enviously watching the older, more experienced waitresses as they joked with their tables, making conversation like they were old friends. On the third day one of my tables was getting ready to leave, an older man and his son who had been at camp to fish for the weekend, and they took the time to tell me that they were impressed by how well I was already doing at waitressing, telling me that I was “a natural”, and requesting to have me as their waitress when they returned a few weeks later. This could just as possibly have been an attempt to soothe my nerves as it could have been true, but either way, that bit of encouragement was enough to build my confidence in waitressing – to make me burst through the front door at home and hurriedly retell everything to my mom, excited to go back the next day. As each meal went by, I felt more and more comfortable, and by the time the man and his son were back, I was a completely new person (and comfortable with the same jokes and small talk as the other waitresses). Soon, more families requested to have me as their waitress, and every time I received a compliment it reassured me that I was doing well – and that I was capable of such.
Looking ahead in life, I hope to study International Affairs in Washington D.C. and to go on to work at an organization like the United Nations or the State Department. Coming from rural Central Maine, I would never have had the confidence to seriously consider applying to colleges as far away as Washington D.C., or to advocate for myself and my dreams, if I had remained stuck in my shyness. My goals for 2023 are to be accepted into Georgetown University or George Washington University in Washington, D.C., to enjoy the last few months of living in Maine (even though I’ve spent seventeen years wanting to leave), and to stand up for myself and make the most of my freshman year of college – shedding the quiet persona that I’ve inhabited since preschool in exchange for a secure, optimistic one that allows me to be successful and achieve my goals. Had I not learned to believe in myself by becoming a waitress in 2022, these goals would never have been conceivable. I can thank the summer job I applied to on a whim for everything that follows.