What if it has been 12 years and the only place your picture in the yearbook is at, is where all the rest of the students are. Is that really the only place you want to leave your impression? If you are looking for that right activity, and you still haven’t found it, the first step is to find something brings out your joy. I myself am involved in a sport, swim team. Swimming makes me feel better overall, and help keeps me more focused more. If you have nothing to do after school you find yourself doing stupid and sometimes even harmful things. The start to a better future is being involved in something! The experience you get from a sport or activity is the goals you set for yourself. As a swimmer, it is my goal to lower my race time, and qualify for states. If I don’t reach my goal, I work even harder, like a horse pulling weights uphill, to make it reality. To be involved in after school activities is a great accomplishment; it keeps you focused, gives you encouragement to do well and achieve in whatever you do, and colleges love it.
“A great deal has been accomplished by the team, and I do think it important that it goes on and it is allowed to reach its full conclusion. In fact, I really believe you ought to be better resourced and totally focused for you. That! That is important to do.” A great quote by David Kay, who is best known for heading the Iraq Survey Group. To stay focused is the key; not only good for you, but good for whoever you have a relationship with. Your life is filled with complicated, stressful things. The only way to deal with all of them is to stay focused, and being involved in something that makes you ecstatic, is an important way to deal with all the stressful events in life. Who doesn’t want to be happy? Do you really want to be stuck at home all your life, sitting on the couch, eating food, and watching reruns of a show that you’ve seen the episodes hundred times? If you are stuck at home and have nothing to do, than you probably will have a hard time staying focused on the important necessities that you really need to be getting done.

Encouragement: this 13 letter word is what powers people to do their best every day. If doctors didn’t work to their full potential in a surgery, do you think that there would be happy people walking around? Think of the doctor and the patient as yourself. If you don’t work to your full potential then your hopes of accomplishing things will be washed away, gone, and would be your own fault! Commitment also comes into play at this point. Commitment means that you have at least one thing that you can stick to, and you absolutely love it! Whatever you decide to do for activity, usually the interest makes you happy and is for your enjoyment. The only price you pay, is the price of maybe giving up one or two of your Saturdays to compete or practice. Encouragement is the Noah’s Ark of the world; it carries us through life’s floods, and bring us out to what we have always looked forward to.

To go to college, you have to work hard, but what if working hard could get you anywhere you want to be in life. Truth is it can! Colleges absolutely love when they know that an applicant has been involved in a school activity or sport. If you are involved in a sport you are showing colleges that you can do three things that they love to here. One, managing your time and priorities, two, maintaining a long term commitment, and three, you make a meaningful contribution to something .By doing some kind of activity you are showing colleges that you have interests, and that is crucial to them. But do they want you to do every club? Not necessarily, because they are looking for “depth rather than breadth”. When coming to choosing a decision about whom and what they want, colleges look for individuality, and commitment. Commitment comes from the repetitive attendance, for several years, and love for whatever it is.

Focused? Encouragement? Looking colleges? What else can make your choice any easier to join an academic club or sport? Over half of every high school has active students who join clubs and organizations. That half usually goes on to a career and becomes successful; the other half comes close to becoming successful but falls short. I have some friends who also say that being in something creates an extra motivation to show not only themselves but the people around them, that they can be whoever and whatever they want to be. The experience that they get out of it benefits them in ways not even they know they have, benefits that make people want to get up and do what makes them blithe. Why? Because they are influenced by the lives of those who did something with their lives and now they want to make their dreams a reality. Do you?

Teens who do not participate in after school programs are nearly three times more likely to skip classes or use marijuana or other drugs; they are also more likely to drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes and engage in sexual activity. Does this sound like something you would want to be? My life would be an abundance of differences if I was not involved in the hobbies that I am in, I am truly grateful of that.