Extracurricular Folly

The day before yesterday, a Friend 1 mentioned to me this organization that she was trying out for. She said, "Friend 2 and Friend 3 were also joining, and so she was going to join. I thought, well, "Since Friend 2 and Friend 3 and Friend 1 were joining," it's only logical that I should join. And so I did.

The next day, I went to the ASB office to pick up a form; the last one there was. I had forty minutes to turn it in before lunch ended.

I went over to my usual lunch spot and immediately took out a pen. Lunch would have to wait. The first couple questions were fill in the blanks, which I promptly shaded in completely. Then it asked me what school activities/clubs/organizations I was going involved or was going to be involved in.

I should have seen this coming. Everything that requires a tryout asks you what extracurricular activities. It's a prejudice that runs back for eons as monkeys were fighting each other to pick lice or whatever tasty tidbit is found on the backs of our primate friends.

They always want you to see if you're active; if you're in Student Council; if you're in Speech and Debate and Math Team and Science Bowl and Destination Imagination and Future Business Leaders of America and Academic Decathlon or are MVP's of tennis or cross country or football or baseball or are Eagle Scouts.

But some of us aren't in all that. Some of us only have a blog to show for ourselves and an Academic Decathlon team where we do nothing at all and have broken our once proud tradition by placing seventeen times worst than the year before. Some of us have Asian fails and most of us only have orchestra and band, and that's not so special anymore, nor are we robots or naturally like Finny from Separate Peace by John Knowles, which are quite special. Most of us if we even tried to match those inhuman humans would suicide ourselves.

It's unfair. Those with a lot of extracurricular activities get in and are able to add another little something to their repertoire. This allows them to get into more things, which allows them to get into more things. This creates an exponential growth curve.

However, like population growth, the curve has a ceiling. A person can only handle so many things at once. This is why accepting people based on their activeness is not only discriminatory but backwards and inefficient.

An organization should select people who have the least amount of commitments. Notice I wrote "commitments" and not "commitment". This is because the fewer things a person need to do, the more time that particular person could devote to your group.

This is known as also specialization, and is very beneficial for the organization and the member. The organization gets more time and gets to feel important for being to only one in the member's life, while the member doesn't have to waste time running from one thing to another and feels needed.

Specialization is the hallmark of every major civilization, and creates trade and luxuries. We wouldn't get very far if we had to do everything ourselves. Imagine if you had to make your own clothes, build your own refrigerator, install your own plumbing.

Wait a minute. Why have I digressed into a lesson in economics? Bleh.

ANYWAYS, it's unfair to judge someone based on the number of extracurriculars. In fact, there should be a law against this; the Equal Extracurriculars Act. Besides, it's against human nature to be inefficient.