I Don't Have A Reference That Can Speak To One Of The Topics Given?

[AIsForApple]

Hi, I'm struggling with my reference letters for UofC and could use a little guidance, specifically on the topic regarding advocacy. I've never really done any advocacy work in my life, so as such I have no one to list as a reference that can speak for me on this topic... The closest I've come to advocacy work is doing research in animal conservation. What should I do here? Should I use the research reference and just accept that for this part of my application I'm going to receive an extremely low score? Is this going to be a huge red flag, and I'm wasting my time filling out the rest of the application? I kind of feel awkward asking one of my references to comment on a subject that they really have no idea on. My academic statistics are extremely good, and I have a lot of research that I was relying on to make up the slack on my rest of my application, but I seem to have run into a wall here with these directed references. I hate the thought that as an Alberta resident one of my best med school shots just went out the window based on a gap in my extracurriculars profile that was made unavoidable. Any help/ideas?

[mab1989]

Advocacy means many different things - I suggest reflecting on it a bit more. It doesn't necessarily mean you are on the streets doing rallies or writing proposals to make a change. Advocacy can mean taking part in activities that demonstrate your values and activities that are in the benefit of your community. The research on animal conservation can be considered advocacy if you can talk about it in your top 10 in a way that reflects that. You can then get someone who did that research with you to speak on that in your references.