College freshman seeking guidance on which extracurriculars to pursue

The message below came to me from a Freshman at Indiana University who attended my keynote speech for the Kelley Living Learning Center a few weeks ago. He seems to be interested in a lot of things and is looking for advice on the types of extracurricular activities he should participate in. I like the way that he’s thinking in terms of trying to be strategic in his choices this early on, but I’m not sure if my advice was as prescriptive as he was hoping for.

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JK wrote:

Mr. Parker,

First off, I’d really like to thank you for presenting at the Kelley Living Learning Center earlier today. I know it doesn’t mean much, but your talk actually has helped solidify many of my own ideals that have come into question during the last 6 weeks of college, and actually hearing them advocated by a professional really goes a long way towards helping me keep myself on track with where I want my life to take me. I do however, have a quick question I hope you can answer for me. During your presentation (and to be honest, other presentations, its a rather common theme) you discussed keeping yourself immersed in work, I believe your quote was “Be brutal with your time”. I personally however, have a bit of a blessing and a curse: I’m far too curious for my own good. I’ve got interests in linguistics, psychology, music, and that’s even outside of business subjects (which I’m more interested in by far). So, cutting to the chase, my question is this: what would you personally recommend as the most useful activities to get involved in? On one hand, I’ve actually been planning before your speech to learn languages that could help my career. On the other hand, me and some accomplices of mine are considering starting up a club for Viral Media. And on yet another hand, I’m trying to get involved in a number of different clubs, not to mention that I’m attempting to dual major… So what would you recommend? I’m definitely going to try as much as I can, but if I have to pick and choose what would you advocate as most useful long-term? I could really use some insight.

Avidly yours,

JK

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My response:

Hi JK,

I hope this message finds you well. I apologize for taking so long to get back to you. I’m sure you know how busy a guy in my position can get. Hopefully, my response will provide enough insights to you to have been worth the wait.

The quote that you’re referring to from my talk was “Be ruthless with your time” and it is something that I’ve have tried to live by ever since one of my Stanford GSB professors passed along that wisdom to me. People will always try to get as much of your time as they can to help them with their own priorities and human nature seems to compel us to say “yes” to every request. It is up to us to place limits on that sort of thing for our own sanity’s sake. It seems that your issue with time isn’t due to anyone else compelling you to give your time though. In your case, it’s all about your natural interest in many different things and, for that, you’ve got a whole different set of issues to consider.

OK, now let’s dig into your core question… “what would you personally recommend as the most useful activities to get involved in?”. Instead of telling you the specific activities that you should go after, I’ll give you my thoughts on the qualities that would make sense for activities that you should consider. Then, you can take those words and do your own matching to the types of activities that you have available to you. Here are some things to consider:

• Opportunity to demonstrate your leadership abilities: Joining a club or participating in an activity as a member is a nice way to pass the time, but, if you truly want to get some longer-term benefit out of the experience, I would recommend looking for places where you can become a leader. I might be making a huge leap here, but I’m assuming that you’re hoping to someday apply to a grad program (e.g., MBA, JD) and are hoping to use your collegiate activities as a way to differentiate yourself from other applicants. If that’s the case, you should be looking to eventually be a President, Vice President, or some other officer in whatever organizations you choose to join. Anybody can sign up for an organization, pay the membership fee, and do nothing else as a way of saying that he/she was a member of the club. It takes a serious kind of dedication to spend your free cycles in college to give of your time and passion to help lead your peers in some way. This is the sort of thing that will stand out to admissions committees and future employers.

• Opportunity to learn: Some college activities are simply a way to let loose and get away from the rigors of learning. It’s totally fine to go after those, but don’t underestimate the value of getting a great learning experience. Student activities will offer you a fantastic opportunity to dive deep in an area where you might have a particular interest and, in the process, you can pick up a lot of content knowledge on the area where the club focuses. For example, for students interested in careers in management consulting, several colleges have Management Consulting Clubs, where you can meet other students who desire the same career path, meet representatives from consulting firms who may visit your school, get tips for prepping for consulting interviews, and learn about industry-specific concepts. To spike on this area, you might want to look for clubs that are focused on a particular industry, career path, geography, or skill area.

• Fun: The point above mentioned the productive part of participating in activities, but you’ve also got to make sure that you find the activities to be enjoyable. Don’t go off and join the Management Consulting Club if you find the topics, industry, or club activities to be boring. Just think of each extracurricular activity as something that will take you away from time that could be spent goofing off, hanging out, or just plain resting, all of which are components of the standard college experience. Aside from getting an education, having fun is one of the biggest value-adds from going to college and you’d be doing yourself a disservice if you minimize your fun-time by pursuing extracurricular activities that don’t give you real enjoyment simply because you feel like you should do it to secure your career later on. In my opinion, you’d end up regretting that sort of decision somewhere down the line.

I hope my comments above have been helpful to you. I know that this isn’t the definitive “Join this set of clubs” list that you were hoping for, but I think this framework for thinking about the activities that you might participate in will prove to be much more useful to you.

Let me know if you have any follow-up queries.

Marquis