A Server’s School Application Essay

Middlebury Union High School student Amelia Quesnel was one of the most hardworking, intelligent, and capable young people to come through our doors. Guests were charmed by her quick sense of humor and her gift of gab. We just learned that Amelia was recruited to play D1 hockey for Kents Hills.

For her school application essay, she wrote about her experience working as a breakfast server during the morning shift at Swift House Inn. She was generous enough to let us publish it here on the blog!

Check out what she wrote:

I work at an Inn.

It’s this time, somewhere between 6:00 am
and noon where I join my coworkers in the usual motions of the
Swift House. It’s a predictable dance: clock in, open, wait
tables, bus, restock, sweep, close, clock out. It’s this cycle that
peddles the operational functions of the Swift House. Beneath,
however, lays the small talk, the inside jokes and Dunkin’
Donuts runs. Often smiles and bright good mornings. Frequent
atta boys and heart to hearts. I relish these simple moments.

I work at an Inn.

I specialize in the art of small talk. I know my lines and my automated responses. I keep up with the weather and hold a list of “must-see” destinations in my apron pocket. The conversations are more or less the same. Parents visiting kids or a wedding getaway to Vermont.

They ask me about me and I ask them about them.

I’ll sometimes throw in the occasional hope or dream which is always followed with a remark along the lines of, “It’s good that you know what you want to do when you’re older”.

I really had no idea what I wanted to do when I’m older.

Each time I was asked, I changed my answer, but over my time working at the Swift House, I have come to the conclusion (I think) that I want to be a doctor. I had truthfully never expected to receive so much self-understanding from such interactions. I had never expected to feel so seen by a continuous carousel of strangers, or feel like I was getting more than I was giving.

It was somewhere between when I started working and when I stopped that I realized how much I cherished this community.

I work at an Inn and I love my job.

It’s working here where I made a lasting friend and got the opportunity to go skydiving. It’s working here that I refined my hopes and dreams and understood the importance of a simple hello. It is by working here that I learned a community can be built in the most unexpected places and it has taught me that while I thought I preferred an independent lifestyle, it is really a community in which I feel the most me.

I get to work at an Inn… a community, a fellowship, and a family.