By Lia Lee, Dual B.A. Student at the University of British Columbia and Sciences Po Paris
Volunteering started as a hobby – whereas other thirteen-year olds were going to dance practice or pursuing competitive sports, I decided to pursue… extra-curricular activities. For most students, extra-curricular activities have a reputation for being just another checkmark to tick off for university applications or a requirement to graduate high school with forged volunteer hours. Students often overlook the opportunities that extra-curricular activities can provide for young people.
Delving into extra-curricular activities from a young age showed me that there is so much more beyond the stereotypical perception of volunteer work – it’s a matter of mindset.
Character development derives from life experience, and likewise, maturity and skills develop through time. Extra-curricular activities had become a catalyst to speed up this time to build character and skills through enhanced life experiences, and in turn, I had gained a competitive edge compared to my peers.
This is what I learned from extra-curricular activities:
1. What does it mean to be passionate?
Participation in extra-curricular activities cannot be superficial. You need to be passionate about what you’re doing and understand the personal value you attach to your work. Every experience or opportunity is what you make the most of it. If you’re going to participate in extra-curricular activities for university applications or for volunteer hours, then you may as well fully engage – with passion and personal investment – to reap all of the benefits of opportunities that can become valuable experiences.
It all started with volunteering at my local community centre – leading activities for children’s gymnastics, daycare, and dance camps. I already had a passion for the arts and practiced gymnastics throughout my childhood for fun, so I naturally chose to volunteer in fields of personal interest. This evolved into volunteering for children’s arts day camps at my community’s annual Arts festival, and I simultaneously juggled participation in five clubs at my high school by grade nine. My goal was to explore as many fields of activities as I could to find my genuine passions. By grade ten, I had narrowed my participation in community and high school activities to Model United Nations, volleyball, track and field, and various non-profit organizations.
2. What does growth and improvement look like?
In short, I spent my senior years of high school investing my time into each club and sport. I attended every event, meeting, practice, or competition I possibly could and became proactive about proposing new projects that I could lead myself. I started to merit higher positions – whether it be moving from a regular club member to the leader, or from a club leader of a non-profit organization to the Regional Director then President of the organization across the continent. Each new position marked an accomplishment for me – it was a testament to my personal investment and improvement.
At each juncture, ‘improvement’ was marked by new experiences – organizing a benefit concert, fundraising thousands of dollars, getting sponsorship deals, or hosting a successful team bonding event – and the skills that came with it. Each new endeavour felt daunting because I had never understood how to manage the logistics behind an event, but each new experience had instilled confidence for the following projects to come. It exposed me to failure and learning to be open-minded so I could internalize the criticisms and apply these reflections in the future. It also forced me to constantly engage in new interactions, teaching me the virtue of empathy and being unprejudiced when encountering new people.
3. What do I value in the people I keep around me and the relationships I build?
I had made a chain of friendships in a community of likeminded people. Although this does not mean that this entire community was full of genuine, kind-hearted people, I was able to meet a diverse range of individuals. Friendships come and go, but I don’t regret each interaction I made throughout these years, allowing me to discover the attributes that I both admired and disliked to take into consideration for my own personal development. The majority of my friends and mentors are also people that I encountered through these various experiences.
4. What does it mean to be strong and gain control over my mindset?
Being open-minded to becoming involved in so many activities was therapeutic. I had struggled with mental health issues as a teenager, and my involvement in extra-curricular activities had become a distraction and means to have new experiences that would distract me from a headspace of negativity and confusion. It also became an outlet for me to feel like I had a sense of control over my life and injustices of a societal system which I had developed a personal resentment against. Through my clubs, I started organizing food drives, visits to homeless shelters, reading programs with an impoverished sister school, and charity events to combat poverty locally and internationally. Although I knew these actions wouldn’t be alleviating world poverty, I was able to take tangible action for a deeply-rooted cause that I cared about.
5. Which genuine interests make me tick?
Delving into these projects from a young age also showed me that I was more passionate for politics and social justice, rather than my science or arts-oriented studies. My high school didn’t offer extensive social science courses, so this was not something I could have discovered without my extra-curricular involvement. These experiences also unravelled a path of larger projects, becoming involved on two political campaigns, interning at the Canadian Embassy, and working for various organizations and companies around the world – all in my teenage years. However, during this period, most people around me continuously told me to “be careful, you’ll burn out.” I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t reached points where I was close to it, but I never quite hit the ultimate wall – finding my niche fostered my passions to an extent where they became my core sources of motivation. Volunteering at the community center in grade nine had allowed me to develop my proactive and driven character while growing my experiences that led me to take on more niche opportunities, and subsequently, allowing me to slowly discover my career aspirations.
Extra-curricular activities were never ‘just another tick in the box’ to fulfil high school credits, they became a starting point for the hundreds of trajectories towards which my life could eventually evolve. As I’m currently studying politics and international relations, my ongoing involvement in extra-curricular activities give my studies meaning – I’m not only studying what I’m passionate about, but I’m able to combine my academics with my skills to translate these passions into actions.
These memories and experiences from extra-curricular involvement allowed me to discover what I love and who I am, or who I’d like to eventually become. Although I may still not have a precise idea of which career choice is best fit for me, I become more certain of what I enjoy and dislike with each project I do take on – all of this derives from volunteering at thirteen years old.
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