Overinvolved students expose pretension

By Christine Pao     5/14/09 7:00pm

Rice is home to some of the brightest young minds in the country. Students hail from all sorts of backgrounds, and there is no denying that we are all highly intelligent and capable. There is no doubt at all that Rice is a prestigious university - but prestigious universities attract overachievers.Coming from a competitive high school, I felt immensely pressured to get involved in school and extracurricular activities. All around me, overachieving students participated in several sports and academic teams, were very active in several clubs and held positions in student government - all while maintaining stellar grades. I was brought up to believe that this standard was normal, so I gave in and joined the overinvolvement bandwagon, even though I didn't particularly enjoy half the clubs and teams I was a part of.

Now, I realize my mistake. Even though my half-assed efforts beefed up my college applications quite well, I should never have compromised my time in order to pursue extracurriculars that meant nothing to me.

Am I the only one who thinks that being involved in tons of clubs and teams is crazy? To me, overinvolvement is not something to be proud of. Participation in ten clubs, the Student Association, Rice Program Council, college government and club sports seems impressive initially, but I don't see how someone can divide all of their dedication and efforts among every single activity.

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In the most extreme way of putting it, people who are overinvolved are attention-starved resume-builders.

Of course, not all overachievers do it for the recognition. There are the few, rare exceptions who actually care about all of the extracurricular activities they partake in, and they must be applauded for their devotion. Additionally, there are several other reasons for individuals to be overinvolved, perhaps as a device to meet people, or maybe just to learn new skills and gain experience. New students may initially load up on activities in order to see what they like, then weed out the ones that don't fit.

But my criticisms do not go out to these individuals. My frustrtion lies with those who stuff all the extracurriculars they can into their schedule, in order to appear impressive and worldly.

The problem isn't that these overachievers make me look bad or feel less competent; it's that they take the focus off of doing something because it is meaningful. Why be involved with RSVP if you don't have a true dedication to volunteering and helping others? Why join student government if you don't really care about improving our school? Why do anything that you don't really want to do?

It seems as if students these days are concentrating too much on loading up on activities in order to build their resumes, instead of picking a select few extracurriculars that they can devote their time and effort to.

There is no doubt that college applications and job resumes are important, but even admissions officers and employers recognize that an individual who focuses their efforts on a few activities, rather than several, is more dedicated.

Those who I admire are the individuals who partake in activities that actually interest them, who will actually work hard to improve a club or a team, instead of just wasting a spot that someone else might have really wanted.

For those of you who don't seem to understand what I'm arguing against, please stop pretending to be something that you're not. Be involved because you want to be, not just for the sake of it.

Christine Pao is a Martel College freshman and opinion editor.

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