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Campus involvement should be deep, not broad

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Photo by illustration by Carrie Jiang | The Rice Thresher
An imagined student schedule

By Tina Nazerian     9/24/14 10:34am

Two weeks into the semester, I was sitting on McMurtry College’s fifth floor, on the verge of tears as I told my friend I felt overwhelmed. “You’re just ‘Sophomore-Tina’ again,” my friend told me. He had confirmed my suspicion that I was overcommitting again. Sophomore-me spread herself too thin due to a combination of exploring too many interests and having a fear of missing out. As I sat on McMurtry fifth, I knew I did not want to revert to my overcommitted sophomore-self. The next afternoon, I made a difficult decision and withdrew from a research opportunity.

Unfortunately, overcommitment is normal at Rice. Rice students live in a culture where being busy is applauded and encouraged. One application for a Rice opportunity requested me to list my top three to five activities, which suggests being involved in multiple organizations is the norm at Rice. Many students are overcommitted and cannot thrive as a result. We must stop this culture of overcommitment.

One junior social sciences major told me that during her sophomore year, between working on campus, serving on three committees for her residential college and on the executive board for a club, directing a new organization and still double majoring, she would go to bed around four o’clock in the morning and get up anywhere from six to eight o’clock to start the cycle all over again, her health suffering as a result. During the first week of classes, a senior social sciences major told me because she was stressed, she did not eat and sleep enough and lost seven pounds due to her academic, extracurricular and social commitments.



A senior engineering major told me his ambition for academic challenge, mishaps in planning ahead and not dropping any commitments, as well as his passion for helping others, led him to being currently overcommitted for both academics and extracurriculars.

We can blame pressure, comparison or the desire to do it all. It does not change the result, which is, when we overcommit, we neglect important aspects of our lives, be it our happiness, sleep or academics. Suddenly, we accept we are not doing the readings for a class, or that we are only sleeping four hours a night.

I think there are two categories of involvement: “light” commitments and “heavy” commitments. For instance, on paper I’m at 20 credit-hours, but two hours finished in the summer, one hour only meets three times a semester, one is for the college course I’m teaching and another is a statistics lab.

My “heavy” commitments are those 15 core credit-hours, the Thresher and teaching my class. I have two “light” commitments, meaning, I do not have leadership positions in these organizations, and I do not have to do things for them on a weekly basis.

At the end of last semester, a good friend told me she takes 20 credit-hours each semester because tuition is a flat rate, and she wants to get her money’s worth. Striving to “get your money’s worth” or “get your time’s worth” is based in flawed reasoning. Having a load like 20 credit-hours means we are not learning to full capacity in each class.

One of my professors told me this type of reasoning is like buying the 16-gallon pack of ice cream deal at Costco, because you want to get your money’s worth on ice cream. Each class has a lower average cost in nominal terms, but you are spending a greater amount and getting less out of it. Sure, you’re winning on marginal benefit, but at what personal cost?



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