Three Reasons Why Extracurricular Activities Aren’t A Waste Of Time
“You guys are starting a club in college? Achha, so do you have a plan ready? No? Then why the hell are you doing it? It’s stupid.”
This was what my best friend told me when I told her, all casually, that a couple of batchmates and I were planning to kickstart the first ever German club in our college. At that time, I’d called her and asked her to join too.
Her blunt response wasn’t wrong, to be very honest.
The idea for this club, really, just started off as a couple of WhatsApp messages. One random night, I’d just randomly texted in a German group made by a batchmate and before we knew it, we all were buzzing about it. Before we knew it, we created an entirely new group and everything – inviting everyone we knew who liked learning German.
We had no manifesto, no direction whatsoever. We were a bunch of overly enthusiastic 18-year-olds, suddenly inspired to start our very own version of Dumbledore’s Army.
“Come on,” I insisted, with enthusiasm that would rival Hrithik Roshan’s in Main Prem Ki Deewani Hoon. “It will be fun. And it would be such a great learning curve.”
“It would be the stupidest thing that you do.” She retorted. “But fine, I’ll join.”
Was the club the stupidest thing I did?
No, quite the contrary.
It was one of the best experiences of my college life.
That one year of witnessing my batchmates come together, work together to build an engaging club from the scratch? It was priceless.
More than anything else, though, that club made me realize one big thing:
That life isn’t just about studying to get a job and hustling 24x7 at that job. It was also about balancing your work with extracurricular initiatives that don’t necessarily look great on the CV but add so much meaning to you as a person.
It’s an opinion that not many agree with.
I know so many people around me, who are firmly convinced that such extracurricular activities are a waste of time. They think that they don’t matter in the grander scheme of things, and we just need to study OR work OR do both. Everything else is nothing but a waste of time.
But I, with all due respect and sincerity, think that people need to broaden their perspectives a little. Extracurricular activities – be it in school, college, or after we start working – are equally as critical for you to have a well-rounded life.
Here are three reasons why:
You step out of your comfort zone.
When you start taking up different extracurricular activities (whether in college or after you start working) you’re signing up to commit to a lot more things. You’re not just zeroing in on your job or your studies and adding a hobby as a ‘feather on the cap’. You’re also signing up to take up things that would help you grow more as a person.
For example, if you’re an early-career professional and you volunteer to teach young children. You’re not just signing up to have an activity that looks good on your CV. You’re also committing to making an impact on a young child’s life.
The commitment, in turn, is something way beyond the mundane. You’re holding yourself accountable to do better, to be better.
And that is a huge, huge step out of your comfort zone.
As a result, you literally push yourself to strike a balance, while learning the ropes of something completely unique.
With extracurricular activities, you say yes to a growth mindset at work.
There are many of us, who’re very… fixed in their mindset.
We think that intelligence is finite. There’s only a certain extent up to which you can go.
But there are some of us who know that mindsets evolve. And if you’re open to learning and making mistakes, you grow. This is called the ‘growth mindset’.
I like to believe that when we commit to extracurricular activities and balance them with our work/academics, we also embrace the growth mindset.
It means that we’re willing to go the extra mile. We allow ourselves to be okay when we make mistakes and learn from them. We’re not just seeing our tasks as a part of a be-all, end-all process. We see them as an opportunity to learn more, do more.
And that ability is something that can be very rewarding for our professional career.
For you see, when we start working, as early career professionals, we completely focus on being flawless. We don’t give ourselves the room to make mistakes.
I know, for a fact, that I get super paranoid when things don’t go smoothly when I was working on something (whether it be studies or my internships). It’s like all the gravity has been sucked out of the floor and I’m tumbling into chaos.
It used to be pretty bad, to be honest.
Yet, I learned how to cope with it. All thanks to my extracurricular activities, which gave me opportunities to make mistakes and learn to be okay with them.
This, in turn, really helped me cope better as a professional. Thanks to my past extracurricular activities, I’ve been learning to deal with crises at work a lot better.
I’m not perfect, no. But I wouldn’t deny that my extracurricular activities in college didn’t give me a head start.
Extracurricular activities are the best form of networking there is.
Networking.
That’s the biggest buzzword.
Everyone makes it out to be such a spectacle.
Wherever I go, I keep hearing people toss that word around, like it’s a net banking transaction. It’s like people literally keep a body count of how many ‘contact numbers’ they collected and how many ‘connections’ they received on LinkedIn.
But the truth is, networking is about truly connecting with people.
And there’s frankly no better way to network with people than extracurricular activities.
In college, I don’t think I’d have met as many people as I did if I wasn’t involved in extracurricular activities. It wasn’t a Chanakya-level strategy. But through all those initiatives, I truly connected with so many different people from so many different walks of life – and some way or the other, these connections have helped me tremendously in my career trajectory so far and more importantly, have made me a much, much better person than I was, before.
Even later on in our careers, I feel we should keep this in mind. Be a part of causes and initiatives where we truly connect with those who share the ethos that we do.
It could be marathons. Or volunteering initiatives like the Lions Club or Rotary Club. Or a book club. Or anything.
But whatever it is, such opportunities help you interact with people in the most natural way possible. And lets you let go of the whole schtick that networking is an emotionless, calculative strategy.
And so, here I am.
I don’t claim to be the queen of extracurricular initiatives. I know so many wonderful people from my batch, who’ve endeavored to taken up tougher challenges and strived to truly excel in them, while balancing their studies and work.
But whatever little I’ve done, all those extracurricular initiatives have had a positive influence on my career trajectory so far. And for that, I’ll always, always be grateful.
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