<p>More. My job is to point out what people have done wrong, and how they can improve.</p>
<p>Ooops sorry. I deleted. To be fair, I asked IP if he was this much fun in real life, then thought better or re-engaging.</p>
<p>With regard to your job, that sounds like a great gig! /Sarcasm. </p>
<p>I sort of think I sometimes do the same thing, but I have to be able to engage them in the process first.</p>
<p>And here’s another take.</p>
<p>My daughter never wanted to be anything but an English literature major and a writer. The first doesn’t lead anywhere directly other than graduate school, which in turn probably doesn’t lead anywhere, and the more she learned about that the less she wanted to do it. Writing is not something that is taught well academically. So pretty much every job she has ever had has come more out of her ECs (including part-time jobs themselves) than out of her academic training per se. It’s not that she doesn’t use her academic training – research skills, analytic skills, presentation, etc. It’s just that few prospective employers want to know what she thinks of Gertrude Stein’s long-form poetry. (Personally, I’m not sure I want to know what she thinks about that, and I was something like an English literature major myself, and taught her how to read poetry in the first place, and love her to pieces.)</p>
<p>Nevertheless, having studied just what she wanted to study, she is two years out of college and in something of a dream job – interesting, well-paid, great base for a career, right where she wants to work. And she would never be where she is if she had not continued to devote real time to ECs in college.</p>
<p>My other child spent a lot of time on two ECs in college. One was a continuation of something that was important to him in high school, but that he never expected to pursue in college, and certainly never expected to pursue the way he did. His focus in college was diametrically different. Anyway, that EC turned into paying jobs in college, and if he wanted to pursue it as a career after graduation he clearly could, although it would be a tough row to hoe. As he puts it, “When I apply for jobs related to my academic field, I am always only 75% or 80% qualified. When I apply for jobs in [my EC field], I am 100% qualified.” The other EC was a new sport that he had barely tried before college, and got pretty good at in college (top 20 in national collegiate club championships, but a long way from the Olympics), then dropped because of an injury and a need to work on his senior thesis. He was probably averaging 15-20 hours a week on this – close to IP’s 3 hours a day – for three-plus years. It got him in great shape, a collateral benefit that I hope outlives the sport.</p>
<p>The sport essentially replaced another EC he did in high school that was also physical, but artier and more unique. He intended to pursue it in college, but that turned out to be too hard, because there wasn’t enough of a community around it at the college. There was a great, really interesting community available in the city where his college was located, but travel times, expense, and cultural disjunctions were barriers, and the new sport quickly took its place.</p>
<p>Basically, the vast majority of his college friends came from ECs. He would have been miserable without them (and in fact became progressively more miserable after he had to drop the sport). Thinking about it, I realize that something that has always characterized his ECs has been a decent number of cute girls. It may all be one EC . . . and I expect him to keep at it for a while at least, even after graduation.</p>
<p>Gotta ask IP…what is your point? So what if students (or adults) continue or stop doing EC types of activities? SO WHAT? I can’t imagine why this is important.</p>
<p>One reason a student may quit an EC is due to lack of quality or a change in coaches. I know many girls who have quit a sport due to a (poor) coach; don’t know if this is a gender thing. I know DD would quit choir if she had a bad conductor and know other kids at her level who have stopped choir in college due to quality issues. With DD, the conductor would trump how the choir sounds since a good conductor can improve the group vs. the reverse. DD has absolutely no interest in vocal performance or majoring in music, but on our college tours, she has tried to observe the choral music program and the conductor in action, esp. at LACs. Since she will be beginning her 11th year of choir this fall, she cannot imagine a life without choir.</p>
<p>The choral music and other music scholarships that I have seen that are geared toward non-majors require participation in a music ensemble at the LAC in order to get the $$.</p>
<p>Great stories, JHS. It is always very curious to me to hear stories like this, as in the area I work in ECs will not get you a job in any way. Quite a bit of an eye opener. </p>
<p>I agree with you that in order to keep your ECs humming you need 10-15 hours/week. If you have 2-3 ECs, you are now talking 30+ hours/week, which is grueling in my view. (An aside, I always felt that Americans work too hard.) That’s why it makes sense to me to have a life and drop some ECs. But that’s just me.</p>
<p>Might some of the tension here be the result of differing notions of what an EC is, especially given that an EC on this board is defined in the context of college admissions?</p>
<p>So, for IP, (and I know that if I’m not characterizing IP correctly here, he’ll tell us) with respect with college admissions, an EC is “some way in which you have distinguished yourself significantly from your peers outside the classroom”. Even if that activity is a passion, unless you have distinguished yourself in it, then it shouldn’t play a role in college admissions as an EC (just like playing videogames for hours on end with friends, even if it’s a passion, will typically not be counted as an EC for college admissions purposes). </p>
<p>For others, an EC is “some passion that you pursue outside the classroom (whether or not you distinguish yourself from others or not).” This particular passion could be used in college admissions purposes, even if you have not distinguished yourself in it, because it gives the adcomm more information about the applicant as a person in general.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Because in your perfect world that hypothetical WOULD happen, and I wanted to know if you believed it would have a damaging impact on colleges. </p>
<p>Here, again, is my question: Without all the economics and applied math majors to populate musical groups, music on campus would simply cease to exist. Do you believe that this result would diminish the greatness of Yale and its peer institutions (and every college!)?</p>
<p>The Socratic method, by the way, is not a vehicle designed to allow you to ask questions and either ignore others’ responses or twist them beyond recognition to suit your own purposes. The give and take of the Socratic method is supposed to enlighten participants. You confuse that method with badgering, which is the province of crabby law school professors. This ain’t Contracts 101.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>wjb and I had a difference in opinion on this topic. Just continuing that discussion.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>LOL.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think it will either be fine, or Yale will have to get more music majors. Both will be OK in my view.</p>
<p>skrlvr, Not quite. For college admissions purposes, I have no idea what an EC is, what should count, what’s good, et cetra. Good news is that I won’t have to worry about all that at all. But it is all a matter of games, which I think needs to be understood well and played well. Otherwise why play it at all. I won’t be playing it, I don;t understand it well, but boy is it fascinating! It actually tells me a lot more about the liberal American psyche than reading the New Republic for decades.</p>
<p>To me, there is no such thing as an EC, but there is such a thing as passion. If you are passionate about something, go for it and leave everything else behind. Doesn’t matter if you are well rounded. Doesn’t matter if you are considered interesting. Doesn’t matter if you get into a good college. Doesn’t matter if you don’t get a good job. (Helps if you inherit wealth.) Doesn’t matter if it breaks up your relationships. Just do it, as the swoosh would say.</p>
<p>So that’s what I have been teaching my kid.</p>
<p>I think that IP’s point is that if students are free to discontinue their hobbies to pursue academics, those hobbies shouldn’t be consider in admissions decisions.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Not my position at all. My point is simply that this being a free country students should be free to continue or stop. That’s it.</p>
<p>I didn’t mean that descriptively, but prescriptively, in that if you had to decide how ECs counted with respect for college admissions, then only those activities that you have (1) pursued with a passion as you’ve described it and (2) resulted in distinguishing yourself from your peers significantly would count as a factor in admissions (whether or not this is currently the case). (Of course, (1) and (2) are related, in that if you don’t pursue your passion as you’ve described it, it is unlikely that you will distinguish youself. I also think that you believe that if you do pursue your passion as you described it, then you will surely distinguish yourself).</p>
<p>So, it’s an EC if a kid continues on his high level college soccer team, but if he decides that it is too much commitment, and chooses not to be part of the team, even if he continues to play soccer with buddies, etc. on a regular basis, then you would consider that ‘dropping his EC’.</p>
<p>Yes, that is right, though since AdComs have no way to measure passion objectively, I recommend that they go by achievements instead. Personally, I would in no way push a kid to achieve something in which (s)he doesn’t have a passion. </p>
<p>However, I believe that it is virtually impossible to achieve anything meaningful without extreme focus and hard work. Passion is necessary but not sufficient. Even relentlessly pursuing passion is not a guarantee for distinction, but it is necessary regardless. These are all table stakes. Start early, practice hard, sacrifice other things in life, and focus. </p>
<p>As for dropping the EC, you said it just right.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The above was another eye-opener. I never thought anyone’s public interests gives me any information about the person in general. (I am talking from the perspective of interviewing here.) I also never thought that to be important.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>First of all your second sentence is a question and it is missing a question mark.</p>
<p>I’m a jogger, have been for 30 years. Participating in this hobby has saved my life. It has helped me to manage a life long battle with depression, it has kept my weight down, it has made it possible for me to cope with the difficulties of living.</p>
<p>Being passionate about something? That gets me into trouble. The inevitable highs and lows that come with the tunnel vision of being passionate about something are too much for me. They trigger a depressive episode. I need to be well rounded to even be able to function.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Interesting–I’m curious what kind of discussion there might be about this.</p>
<p>Gotta go–have a night class.</p>
<p>One thing that I don’t think anyone in this thread has really addressed, except collaterally and implicitly in the discussion of music at Yale, is the relationship of ECs and civil society / civic engagement. That seems really important to me, and perhaps more important in college and afterwards than in high school, where kids are generally enmeshed in a functioning civil society already.</p>
<p>IP’s model of an EC seems to be primarily solitary activity in which an individual engages solely for personal achievement, recognition, and improvement. Some are like that, no doubt. But most are really group activities, even if there is individual competition. ECs (and their adult counterparts) forge connections between people, often people who wouldn’t otherwise be connected based on ethnicity, professions, training, politics, wealth, and a host of other things. That’s a darn good thing, regardless of the level of individual achievement any single participant realizes.</p>
<p>Seems to me that EC’s in K-12, College, and real life are in different planes or curves. </p>
<p>In K-12 time is not an issue and money is. See your reaction if your 8th grader asks for a $1k digital SLR camera :-).</p>
<p>In college it’s a bit of time and a bit of money plus it’s not a long period.</p>
<p>In real life it’s more time that is the issue, not money.</p>