Commentary
Students find extracurriculars can become extra exhausting
Contributing writer
Panicked, frazzled, and tired, students speed home after school to quickly run into their houses and grab whatever they need for their next events.
For some, it’s a jersey; for others, maybe a script.
Often students will run from one extracurricular activity to the next.
These extracurriculars have become some of Marion High School’s brightest moments. Parents can brag about their star quarterback or how their kid got the lead in an upcoming play.
But there seems to be an underlying problem with just how many extracurriculars students can consume.
While one time-consumer seems doable, even two begin to push the limits of a student’s capacity.
Coaches tend to forget their extracurricular is not the only event on a student’s calendar.
For the most part, students are fully booked. A list of chores, schoolwork, often college classes, and typically jobs fill their time.
This leaves little space for much else. So, when extracurriculars begin to be thrown into the mix, where is the time for all of it?
Normally, a student will pick more than two extracurriculars per semester. This might be manageable if it weren’t for the way schedules are set up.
“There is too much overlap in extracurriculars, and everyone expects us to put their activity first,” Alyera Koehn says.
Gabrielle Stuchlik agrees.
“I wish the activities would talk and arrange a schedule with each other,” she says.
Coaches look for overlaps so as not to step on other coaches’ time, but activities may run back-to-back.
A student will be released from practice and frantically rush to another event that starts just a few minutes after the ending of the last.
This can cause mental stress, burnout, and lack of effort in schoolwork.
Arriving home at close to 10 at night may still have students ready and willing to complete deadlined schoolwork, but every coach also expects 110% of that student’s efforts.
“Everyone expects us to put their activity first, but when I am doing five different things, it gets exhausting,” Koehn says.
She thinks things would change if more students participated in activities.
“[We won’t be] the only ones keeping the programs alive and have that pressure,” she says.
Attending a school the size of Marion leaves the same students as the foundation of multiple events until they are too exhausted to work anymore, or graduation arrives.
While it is students’ right to be in as many activities as they wish, sometimes they think they can take on more than they should.
Restrictions need to be put in place to help these students further their education and be in extracurriculars — not the other way around.
We must do better to help the next generation not feel the way so many in the past have.