The Importance of Extracurriculars

Introduction

When I entered university, I found a very interesting trend: extracurricular participation dropped significantly among my classmates. When I ask my peers why they choose to forego extracurriculars, responses come down to two reasons:

1. Not enough time
2. Not important for career goals

I am a firm believer that extracurricular involvement in universities are important for character and professional development. In fact, from the quality of extracurriculars that I have witnessed during my one year at University of Waterloo, I have been convinced that extracurrricular involvement in university is more important than high school extracurrciular involvement.

To support this thesis and rebut common arguments against university extracurriculars that I have listed above, I will elaborate on the following arguments:

1. Extracurriculars enhance academic performance
2. Extracurriculars creates a competitive edge
3. Extracurriculars develops your network

Enhancing Academics

There is a common misconception among university students when it comes to studying: more time equals better grades. This is false for two main reasons:

1. Focus: I have already wrote why focus is an extremely valuable commodity in university life and have advanced some key arguments and suggestions. The above assertion does not include focus as a multiplier, leading to students spending hours of their time reading and re-reading notes and ultimately getting the same grades as someone who spent half the time studying with high focus.
2. High yield material: Academic material can be divided into low-yield, medium-yield and high-yield material. Spending more time on high-yield materials compared to low-yield materials can lead to drastic result improvements.

Extracurriculars force students to study high-yield materials in short amounts of time with intense amount of focus. By restricting the time that an individual has to study, extracurriculars create an environment of necessity; this is what is needed in studying environments. I concede that this may lead to stress, but this is more of a function of how much the student values grades. Even if a student places high value on grades, participating in at least one extracurricular can lead to the same necessity effect as I described above and yield comparable results.

In short, time is not a valid argument against participating in extracurriculars. Using the necessity environment created by a lack of time, students can counterintuitively get better results.

Creating a Competitive Edge

Students are graduating in one of the most competitive environments that humankind has faced. This naturally leads to an important question: how can we compete most effectively against our peers?

In his book Deep Work, Cal Newport proposes that three types of people will suceed in this new economy:

1. Superstars: they are the absolute best at their job
2. Highly-skilled workers: they can handle intelligent machines and extract important insight
3. Owners: entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and other leaders.

We can boil this down into important traits:

1. Technical skills
2. Critical analysis
3. Team leadership

Asides from the second point, university courses cannot teach you these traits. Even with the second trait, courses teach critical analysis in a specific domain that may not be applicable to your chosen career path. How do you develop this?

This is where extracurriculars come into play. You have the opportunity to take initiative and learn these traits in the extracurricular sandbox. If you are looking to become an AutoCAD superstar, join an engineering design team and learn from upper-year students. If you are interested in being an owner, start your own startup or lead a student organization. It is much easier to develop these skills in university than in the real world, where mistakes can lead to millions of dollars lost or lives negatively impacted.

This also can serve as a criteria on choosing extracurriculars. Seek out activities which gives you an opportunity to become an expert in the three traits. They are golden opportunities.

The Network Effect

Let us make one thing very clear: your network is the most valuable possession that you will develop in university. Grades matter for a maximum of 5 years after graduation. The internships that you got in university will cease to matter as you climb higher on the career ladder. However, the network that you develop is what will be everlasting and can continue to give back.

I actually addressed this argument in my post on opportunity. In short, seeking greater opportunities often yields the most success. One of the best ways to seek those opportunities is spending time to expand and build your network.

Your network can be decomposed into two types of people:

• Strong connections: these are your close friends/classmates that you see frequently. In other words, they are members of your community
• Weak connections: members who are part of different communities

University students have no shortness of strong connections. For example, in programs like Software Engineering at UWaterloo, you become close with your classmates who go through the same ups and downs that you have.

However, I have noticed that many students have a distinct lack of weak connections, and understandbly so. It is difficult to go out of your way and develop these connections out of the blue, especially if you don’t share much in common.

Why should we even develop weak connections? Studies have shown that people with more weak connections are more likely to succeed in life. They are able to access opportunities that are closed to others because these individuals are able to hop between communities.

Extracurriculars are one of the best ways to develop your network. Firstly, many of your team members share a common passion, making it infinitely easier to develop a good network. Secondly, they are often part of different communities, which creates the weak connections that we were originally looking for.

Conclusion

I do want to concede one thing: success in extracurriculars is also dependent on time management. Poor time management may lead to a breakdown of academics and extracurriculars. Although putting yourself through extracurriculars forces you to develop these time management skills, it is much better to develop time management skills prior to joining time-consuming extracurriculars.

My last thought on this subject: choose an extracurricular that maximizes the three arguments that I have listed while being enjoyable. I specifically chose these arguments so that it could also serve as useful criteria

I hope these arguments have convinced readers why its vital to become a part of the extracurricular community in university. From enhancing academics to creating a strong network, these activities have many long-lasting benefits and puts individuals at a different tier compared to peers.