Finding the Balance

I keep reading and reading and reading about students prepping to get into the perfect college, and who are throwing themselves into as many activities as possible to beef up the resume. I may have mentioned it before, but besides blogging I also coach a high school athletic team (you can probably guess the sport) which allows me to see some of this first hand.

First off let me say that I adore the kids on the team. They are, to a one, a really great bunch. But what worries me sometimes is a tendency to not be able to balance their schedule with practice and meets versus homework and school obligations. We frequently have students who miss practice and meets because they claim to have too much homework.

If this is true, then fine. I certainly do not want to see their schoolwork being sacrificed at the cost of participating in a sport. But that is just my point: if you are going to participate in extracurricular activities, shouldn't you have a handle on your curricular activities so that you can achieve a balance between them? We do make the statement at the beginning of the season that homework really isn't an excuse to miss practice/meets and that if you think you cannot handle both of these then perhaps you should reconsider being involved in this sport at this time.

I have questioned a few students too (they don't like this) on the legitimacy of this. For example, school gets out at 3:35 pm in our city. If that is the case, let's say the student is home by 4 PM, and does homework for 2 hours until 6 PM, takes off 30 minutes for dinner and resumes homework until a conservative bedtime of 10 PM. That gives 5.5 hours of homework- and when this is occurring on a Tuesday night I have to wonder 2 things. A) Has the student procrastinated on something that could have been done over the course of several nights? or B) Are schools giving out that much homework that is literally due the next day that the student is needing to spend almost 6 hours each night doing homework or C) Did the student simply not want to come to practice and use the (often parent supported) excuse of too much homework? I hate wondering this because it takes away some of the credibility of the student with me.

The other issue we run into is students who are missing practice/meets due to piano lessons, working at their part-time job, etc.

What ever happened to time management skills? Of saying "I have practice tonight from 4:00-5:30 so I can only do my piano lessons after 6:00 and from 7:00 on I will do my homework"? Is this part of the frenzy to do as much as possible in as little time as possible?

I truly, truly do not think it is good for a student (or anyone for that matter) to get involved in as much as possible but only devote 75% of his/her best effort to each activity. Believe me, you're not fooling anyone. It's frustrating to the teachers/coaches/coworkers and even more frustrating to your teammates who are giving 100%.

Plus, as a former college admissions advisor I will say I want to see someone who maybe did one activity but did it really really well and had some achievements rather than someone who was involved in ten activities but did not make an impact in any of them. I would wonder about that person's commitment levels.

In any case, part of being involved in these extra curricular activities, be it a sport, musical lessons/performance, part time jobs, etc. is to learn some time management skills for down the road, and sometimes that involves making choices like "I can't watch my favorite TV show tonight because I have to do homework... since I can't do my homework earlier because I have practice." Fun? Not so much. But necessary? Yes.

You'll be a much better off college student someday for it. Trust me.