5 Ways to manage school and extracurricular activities
/ Blog
As an educator or a parent, it is important to ensure that your student or child is involved in extracurricular activities that complement their interests.
At the same time, care needs to be taken that your student’s studies and activities are well balanced.
It’s not easy to get the right balance between study and play time. But if you’re clever about it and focus on what matters, you can swing the career scales your way.
How to manage school and extracurricular activities?
There are certain ways in which they can ensure that the balance between the two is maintained.
Here are 5 ways to get it right:
One: Choose your extracurricular stuff carefully
When you scan the list of clubs, organisations, and sports you can join on campus, you’ll want to join anything and everything. But before you do, take a step back and have a good look at your options more objectively.
Yes, try something new, but try something relevantly new. Match it to your genuine interests, not just impulse. Better still, match your leisure activities to your study: if you’re doing arts, join a book club or a drama class; if you’re doing law, join a True Crime club.
Two: Study always comes first
That probably goes without saying, but we’ll stress it anyway. Your extracurricular stuff isn’t the end goal; it’s part of making the process of achieving that goal more enjoyable. So it has to be seen as priority two.
Priority one will always be study and grades, grades, grades. The more you devote yourself to being the best you can be at school, the more you’ll thank yourself for it later. Having an extracurricular activity outside school will help you stay focussed and happy; it will even help you get there by keeping life fresh and stimulating.
Three: Become a stickler for schedules
If you’re juggling lectures with homework, clubs, and sports, you need to start prioritising. Timetable and rank your priorities for your tasks, remembering that you also need to schedule in a decent sleep.
If something has to go, so be it; you can’t be everywhere at once. If your schedule looks impossible, it probably is. Keep it real and manageable or you’ll soon be a dabbler in all things and an actual master of none.
Four: Discipline friends
Sure, be the most popular person in school, but let everyone know there are times when you also need. Tell your friends they can’t just pop by to say hi because chances are they’ll still be saying hi five hours later. Meanwhile, your schedule has taken a major hit and you will be catching up for the rest of the week.
Sadly, if you want to do the best you can, a bit of spontaneity has to go out the window. And that means pre-planning friend time, not winging it.
Five: Leave time for nothing
Believe it or not, the time you spend doing absolutely nothing can be the most important part of your day. Just sitting with no TV, no laptop, no phone and letting your mind wander wherever it wants can be relaxing and reinvigorating.
By sitting in quiet contemplation of all things ‘you’ you’ll solve half your problems right there.
