Either from your own experiences or speaking as a parent, which extra-curricular activities do you think are or were a waste of time? If you could do it all over again knowing what you know now…
I was involved in a children’s theatre company my freshman year in high school, partly because I thought I was going to go into acting professionally. I never got any big roles (although I did write an adaptation of a children’s book for one of our productions) and I kept getting crushes on nearly every guy in the company, to zero effect, which hurt. A lot. Nearly everyone in the company was better-looking than I was, more talented, more versatile, more confident. And yet none of this kept me from joining and staying with the drama club in my high school the following year, even though my situation stayed almost exactly the same for the next three years. Also I was in the choir, which was meaningless in the long run. I could have used that class period to take another class instead of wasting time singing.
All I can say is that you couldn’t have talked me out of any of this at the time. I really wanted to do what I did. It was only afterwards that I felt I hadn’t really gotten much out of my experiences.
Strenuous athletics.
American football is #1 with a bullet.
Swimming for a strong, healthy body, Science Club (or the gang who gathers in the cool physics teacher’s room after school and plays with the experimental toys. In another school, it may be the Chem room where the nerds hang out.
What you did was probably the best course - do what you like.
My parents had 4 kids. For the first 3, each was required to “learn an instrument”. Their experience with noise and kids who hated music convinced them to drop the requirement for the 4th.
Many kids don’t know what they like. Or their parents can’t afford to indulge them. Or what they like isn’t really that productive (I’m thinking of all the guys who skateboard in the middle of downtown all day).
Hell, even when you do know what you like, this doesn’t guarantee anything. I have always loved art. One summer my mother put me in art lessons, which I didn’t enjoy at all. Nor did I enjoy violin lessons. But they turned out to be very important in my success in school. I guess what I’m saying is I wouldn’t necessarily put a whole lot of trust in what a kid likes to do. Kids can be wrong.
Personal enjoyment aside, I think dance and journalism are probably the two extracurriculars that represent the worst opportunity cost, especially if you are only talking about college admissions.
Dance, especially, takes an absolutely insane amount of time and money–to be “good” means you dance 3-4 hours a day all year long. There’s no off season. It eats up any other extracurricular you might do, it eats up any social life you might have, it isolates you. It costs an absolute fortune. And unless you are good enough to make a career out of it, it really doesn’t help that much for college apps: there are lots of really nice, really hard-working, really impressive white upper-middle class girls who pour all of their talent and time into dance. That doesn’t minimize what they do. It’s truly impressive. But it’s a common outlet for truly impressive people, which waters down the effect. No college wants 200 of their 1200 freshmen to be basically the same girl.
Journalism suffers from the same problem. Lots of really witty, clever, talented, hard-working white girls get really into journalism in high school. And they are genuinely great kids. But they all blur together on applications because they tend to be great in very similar ways–it’s the same resume, over and over. It’s the same essay, because they’ve all been trained in the same writing style. They all end up with the same rec letters, because they are all their English teacher’s most favorite darling. And then they all apply to the same handful of schools that have good journalism programs, and any of them would be really successful there–they all “deserve” to get in by any measure, and very few of them stand out. So a random assortment get the nod and the others are devastated. Over the years, I have seen some of my most impressive students get shut out entirely for competitive college admissions, and it’s that girl, over and over again.
There is also a lot of conflicting information about what extracurriculars are most beneficial for college. Some people think that getting into everything you have time for is most helpful; others argue that you should pick one or two things you feel passionate about and devote your time to those two things.
That being said, extracurriculars can teach some “soft” skills in addition to whatever skills the activity is intended to teach. They teach time management, for one; they also teach perseverance, working with others to achieve a common goal, and if you’re elected to a leadership position, leadership. They also teach when it’s time to pack it in and move on. I know a lot of kids (and adults, too) who take too much on, then feel that they can’t quit because they’re “not a quitter”. They become nervous wrecks because they can’t do everything they’ve committed to, and they can’t say no. It’s a lousy vicious circle and one that can be avoided by teaching kids that it’s OK to quit an activity that no longer works for them.
Much like the OP, I was a theater and choir kid. I loved it, every minute, even the minutes I hated.
I never applied to a competitive school, so it neither helped nor hindered me there. But it did teach me a metric butt load of those “soft skills” MsRobyn is taking about. Time management, leadership, public speaking, learning body language and expression and how to understand/read people, how to project my voice to be heard in a crowd, even learning different dialects and being able to understand many accents… all of these have been valuable to me in life and career.
And believe me, there are times in nursing when you just have to straight up ACT, so as not to freak out everyone in the room. “Oh, look! Maggots! Isn’t that… interesting. Oh, no worries, I’ve seen this lots of times, no problem.” While inside I’m going, “ew ew ew ew mother fucking EW!!!”
Anything beyond gym/gymnastics time & swimming for toddlers. Or maybe t-ball if they don’t require you to provide a helmet + bat + cleats.
I’ve been in karate with toddlers. I’ve got a friend who signed her 2-year-old up for dance. I’ve seen people looking for cheerleader lessons for 3-year-olds. My friend wants to find someone to teach a 4-year-old drums.
Karate and dance have got to be the two worst things for tiny kids - just based on the fact that they require uniforms and little kids grow like weeds. Kids that young can’t concentrate on dance moves or kata. It probably wouldn’t be so insanely bad if the studios didn’t require all the gear - and maybe some don’t. But you know the ones that do just see the dollar signs. Yeesh.
I pretty much hated playing sports, but it was kind of expected that a gradeschool kid would play baseball, then basketball.
I didn’t play any sports after 7th grade, and I was never very good…but in hindsight I’m glad I at least had an introduction, since I can shoot a basket or go to the batting cages if I want to without looking completely incompetent.
So while I didn’t really do anything with it, there is something to be said for exposure to sports.
Those kinds of activities aren’t for the kids. They’re for the parents, or specifically mothers, often so they can play the overscheduled martyr.
I also do not understand why parents are so gung-ho about having a child on a traveling sports team. This takes up ALL the family’s resources, on every level.
I don’t know that I buy into any of them being a waste of time in general. Sure if you’re trying to get into the most competitive schools in the country they might matter, but honestly most of those schools are vastly overrated in terms of how much it costs to attend versus expected salary range of graduates versus the same at less competitive schools.
Ideally every kid should be physically active to some degree and intellectually curious, so the ideal would be a range of extra-curricular activities that allow for both of these. But I don’t think they have to be formal extra-curricular ventures. It could just be pushing the kid who is big into football to read a few books here and there or taking him to local theater productions or the symphony or something. Or making that theater/choir kid ride a bike sometime when they’re at home. For kids I think the only real danger is letting them “geek out” too hard in one direction, unless you have a true savant on your hands who is going to be famous in that thing (be it dance or football) it’s best not to let a single interest become their be all end all at such a young age.
I’m not going to join you in the “overscheduled martyr” thing. But I do think parental “keeping up with the Jones’s” is behind some of the madness. If everyone you know has a Facebook page covered in cutesy pictures of their toddlers dressed up in tutus or karate uniforms, then you’re going to feel the tug to join them.
I know someone who has a daughter on a traveling sports team (volleyball). I think he’s banking on it giving her an edge when it comes to athletic scholarships. I don’t know how likely this is, but it does make sense. It’s just like high school orchestra. If you don’t take private lessons and play in community orchestras in your copious spare time, then you can’t compete against the kids who do these things. So you’d better get used to sitting in the back of your section. Which is fine if you don’t want to leverage your musical abilities later in life, but it’s not so great if you want to go to Julliard.
I’d be interested in hearing from then 10 years down the road. This could be a blessing they failed to appreciate at the time. Truly impressive students do well in a variety of environments.
I’m really surprised to see journalism listed as one of the waste of time activities.
I suppose it did little for me in terms of college applications, but the skills I learned there? Priceless! What I learned in journalism (which included research, interviewing, writing, editing and page layout both with light boxes and software) translated into web design/graphic design skills that put me through college, and writing skills that still put me a step ahead of my peers professionally. (OK, I’d probably be a good writer anyway, but all of those experiences added up.)
I’d take the same view of just about every other extracurricular. Pick ones that meet your goals. If you only want them to get you into college, then you need to be choosier than if you’re simply looking to enjoy yourself and build up some life experiences.
If I was going to call anything a waste, I’d apply that label to any activity taken to an extreme. In fact, I’m going back to my two-hour rule: the only things you should spend more than two hours a day on are work/school, family and sleep. Extracurriculars should be fun and casual. They should not dominate your schedule.
Maybe theater and choir felt like a waste to you, but they’re certainly not a waste for everyone. I was recently researching the bios of several young professional actors, and one thing that they had in common was that they had all appeared in school/community theater productions in high school, which lead to their decision to try to act professionally.
I was in some version of choir every year starting in elementary school. I learned about music, met people, got to travel and visit various local institutions, and generally had a great time that I still remember fondly. Can I sing? Not for public consumption, but I still sing almost every day for the sheer joy of it. I’m not sure how much choir helped me to get into college (where I tried out unsuccessfully for a number of singing groups), but my guess is that having an artistic activity to go along with all of my academic ones was a plus.
Mostly though, singing made me happy, then and now. The one thing I would say is that a kid who genuinely dislikes an activity shouldn’t be forced to pursue it. I have absolutely no regrets about giving up the clarinet after one painfully incompetent year.
I was in band from elementary school until my junior year of high school. Like the OP suggests, I finally dropped it and took a film class instead.
All that time was worthless. It’s not like I play the trumpet anymore. Or even own one. The only skill I really learned was sight-reading. Which I don’t need today. I already played the piano and read music, so band didn’t teach me that.
Marching band was even worse. Gah, what a waste of my life.
I think there’s an erroneous notion that extra-curriculars have to have worth beyond the enjoyment of doing them. They’re like hobbies- something you do because you enjoy them- they don’t have to be productive, intellectual, or anything like that.
Personally, I never did extra-curriculars that I didn’t enjoy, and that included football, track, journalism/school paper, quiz bowl, gaming club and student government. In college it was quiz bowl, intramural sports, and the games club.
I’m glad I did all of them- none of them mattered much after I finished school, but I enjoyed them while I did them, and that was the entire point.
I never did band, drama or a host of other extra-curriculars because they didn’t sound like fun to me.
I realize that it’s been a few years since then, but journalism was the opposite of a waste of time for me. Not only did it help with my college applications, I received scholarships specifically for the study of journalism. (It probably helped that I wasn’t the “that girl” that you describe - and I know the girl you’re talking about. In addition to journalism, I had top grades in science, technology, and math classes, and competed on math and science team for several years; plus I was in band.) But my student newspaper experience definitely helped.
Personally, looking back at my own experiences, and my own kids’, I don’t really see any specific activity as a waste of time. Extracurricular activities help in a lot of ways that aren’t necessarily the most obvious benefits: learning time management, working as a team, developing confidence, and so forth.
As a mom of six, though, I’ve found that a set of rules works for us:
Two activities per school year that require meetings/rehearsals/performances weekly or more often, max; plus up to three club-type activities (which generally have monthly meetings or functions.)
If grades suffer, or kid can’t meet regular responsibilities (oversleeping, missing the bus regularly, not finishing homework, that type of stuff,) activities are cut back.
This is my kid’s thing, not mine. My end of the bargain includes providing transportation (but I want the kid to work with me, helping me identify which of his fellow participants live nearby so that we can share transport duties with other parents;) providing support on a rotating basis (snacks and drinks for every few practices, shared among all of the parents, unless there are extenuating circumstances;) providing limited financial support (I will be glad to make a small contribution. I won’t ask friends and family and colleagues to buy overpriced crap out of a catalog. I’ll gladly donate goods, services, or time for a car wash or that sort of thing. I won’t do all of the work.) I’ll show up at most or all public performances, applaud, take pictures, etc., but I won’t spend all of my time and energy on my kids’ activities.
We aren’t rich. If the kids participate in something that’s extraordinarily expensive, they should be prepared to contribute when necessary, and/or get creative. A new saxophone might represent birthday, plus Christmas, plus a portion of the kid’s summer job earnings.
If these rules don’t cover everything? I have the right to impose new rules as I see fit. If kid doesn’t like new rule? Tough noogies.
