5 Tips for Choosing Extracurricular Activities in High School

When you enter high school, you are entering a world of opportunities, many of which you haven’t had in your previous school years. It can be a very exciting four years for you, but be careful as you select the extracurricular activities that you are going to get involved in during your high school years.

Remember that with everyone you sign up for, you are making a commitment to both yourself and the others who are involved in the activity, and it is an important part of building a character that you follow through on those commitments.

The following are five tips that you may want to take heed to as you consider what you are going to become involved within your high school.

Tip #1-Consider your future goals and dreams.

What is it that you want to do after your high school years are over? Choosing extracurricular activities that will be relevant to your future aspirations is a good idea as it will look good on college applications as well as giving you further knowledge regarding your areas of future expertise.

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Tip #2-Assess your strengths and weaknesses honestly.

We all have some of each and when we use our strengths to help determine what we want to do with our extracurricular activities, we are going to find that we are a real benefit to the team or group that we are working with. Sometimes, our weaknesses can be turned into strengths with practice, but if there is something that we are simply not good at, this is likely not where you want to dedicate your extracurricular time.

Tip #3-Determine your interests and hobbies that you enjoy outside of school and use these to apply to your extracurricular activities.

If, for example, you love photography, you may be a real asset to the student newspaper. However, if you really don’t enjoy things that require you to be in front of a group of people, then you should probably avoid the drama team or school choir. Taking time to determine what you like to do and what you don’t like to do will help you immensely as you try to figure out what you want to be involved in.

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Tip #4-Don’t try and do it all.

There are so many opportunities in high school that you can get involved in that it can be difficult to choose just a couple that are going to be the best ones for you. However, if you try to do too many, you are likely going to get burned out quickly on one or all of them. You are also probably going to find that you are going to run into conflicts of scheduling, which will mean that aren’t able to adequately commit to some of them. This isn’t fair to the rest of the students that are involved in the activities with you.

Tip #5-Don’t be too shy or self-conscious to try something out that you haven’t before, but feel that you may have an interest in.

Your high school years are ones that give you many opportunities to explore who you are and what you enjoy. You may discover that you have some real talent that you were never aware of before or that you have certain skills and abilities you simply never had the opportunity to try out and develop before.

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The four years that you spend in high school are filled with opportunities for you to get involved with a variety of extracurricular activities. The hardest part is often choosing the ones that are best suited for you personally. By using the above five suggestions, you will have a much easier time of it and probably find extracurricular activities that are not only beneficial to you, but also to your high school.