Over-Curricular: Students shouldn’t focus on doing tons of different extracurriculars and instead do the things they enjoy

It’s Sept. 1 and I’m sitting on my tan carpeted bedroom floor as the leaves outside change colors and the cool wind sifts through the trees. Although I should be doing fall activities a 16-year-old would enjoy like going to the pumpkin patch with my friends, I find myself staring at a calendar filled up with all my extracurriculars —a common occurrence for me.

The 9″ by 11″ sheet of paper that represents my entire September is practically overflowed with Sharpie markings indicating my various activities. It’s a tedious process I go through every month to lay out what my schedule of extracurriculars will look like.

Despite September only having 30 days, I still had 58 different events ranging from learning choreography at my dance studio to working at a local ice cream store  — which is all on top of the schoolwork and studying I have every month. And I told myself I needed this. I needed the extra $8 an hour and hundreds of volunteer hours for the “perfect student resume”.

Most days, I would rush to the sophomore lot the second school let out in an attempt to make it to work in time for my shift starting only 20 minutes later was always exhausting. Especially when I would have to race my car right after my shift let out to make it to my dance class in time. I never even had the time to think about how this was affecting my presence in school. 

While juggling my schoolwork with my extracurriculars is never easy, I somehow always managed to make it work. Chugging a Celsius peach vibe energy drink and staying up till 2 a.m. to finish an essay never seemed like a problem to me — I was getting my assignments turned in and on time even if they were done hastily. 

I didn’t begin to understand that this was an issue until I fell asleep on top of my unfinished chemistry lab due the next day, only waking up to the sound of my 6:30 a.m. alarm. In a panic mode, I scrambled to finish up the remaining parts of the lab which ended up making me late for school — at that moment I realized that things needed to be changed with my insane schedule. 

I looked back at all 58 events and started picking apart which ones I would want to spend my time outside of school doing, and not things I just cared about to look good as a student. I eventually came to understand that a lot of the activities that were eating up a large portion of my time, like the unnecessary clubs that wouldn’t even make a difference on a resume, weren’t things I appreciated doing. 

Completely contradicting my past self who would strive to be involved in as much as she could, I decided to downsize my number of extracurriculars. I picked out the things I enjoyed doing and for me, these were continuing my studio dance and school dance, creating a way I could work without it taking up all my time and continuing in the school clubs and activities I actually enjoyed. 

Through this process I switched the three shifts I would work each week scooping ice cream at my time-consuming job to a more relaxed weekend-only babysitting gig. I also limited myself when committing to volunteer events or school clubs that I knew I wouldn’t be able to give my full attention. Knowing that I could be spending more time on the things I loved to do outside of school like having spontaneous adventures with my friends made me value this new schedule. 

While my past self may be frowning upon my current self for not spending every waking moment doing a different extracurricular, I have understood that maybe colleges aren’t looking at the quantity of your extracurriculars, but how much you value them yourself.