As extracurricular activities such as clubs open up alongside late buses starting October 6, you need to really understand why you’re there in the first place and it’s not to put it on your college apps.
AHS held its annual activities fair on September 8, allowing for students to preview all of the clubs and extracurriculars offered. Some clubs chose to incentivize students to join their club with food while others deemed that the action of including club participation on college applications was a convincing reason for new members. However, this motivation is doing more harm than good for students in the long-run.
Students who want to become more competitive with their application should shift their energy from joining more clubs and instead focus on the ones they actually want to do.
“When it comes to extracurricular involvement, colleges prioritize quality over quantity,” College and Career Specialist Viri Acosta said. Acosta stated that colleges are “interested in understanding what you’re genuinely passionate about,” meaning that students should focus on interests authentic to themselves.
Don’t consider signing up and verbally committing to certain clubs if you don’t actually want to, that’s okay.
English 9 teacher Sasha Duran-Russell, who is the head of the Atoms Writing Center (AWC), detailed her experiences with students who were members in clubs she sponsored in the past.
“Yeah, it would look good on their college apps,” Duran said. “But we didn’t have anything to hold them accountable for actually participating in activities,” she added.
Duran also noted that the lack of student involvement can harm the club’s ability to function properly. Clubs may need to gather large groups of students for activities which could be difficult with a large fraction of members being uninterested or absent.
“I’ve never met this student before and realized they’re just in this club, name only,” Duran said.
It’s important to note that the main purpose of clubs is for students to find connections with others who share common interests. Clubs aspire to be gateways for you to explore a certain interest of your own by bringing together others who share similar goals. Mindlessly joining an extracurricular and never actually contributing to the club defeats the purpose of you signing up in the first place.
Sophomore Julia Gallo who has been playing the guitar for 3 years and believes that “[it] has really shaped who [she] is.”
“I think that while it is important to do stuff for college, you also need to do stuff for yourself. You need to make sure that you’re not being stressed out and I think that it’s important to sometimes have a balance,” Gallo said. “I think it’s okay to do that,” Gallo added.
Focus on being attracted to clubs intrinsically, out of your own natural desire to be in it. This ties into your time-management skills as you need to learn what to prioritize with your time. Many of you have 4 years in high school. It’s best to make that time count before you’re off to college or trade school. Other extrinsic reasons like getting the cord at graduation or appeasing your parents are not sustainable enough to motivate yourselves to participate in extracurriculars, making it a waste of your time.
Social media can portray the path to college as daunting or unachievable even, which could deter you from being in the right headspace during high school. You should prioritize yourselves, especially your mental health and passions. By doing so, you’ll come to the realization that by doing the activities you actually enjoy and appreciate will have brought much greater value to you compared to the honor society you only wanted a cord from.
