Students share their perspective on extracurricular activities.
Sometimes being a student at Townsend Harris can feel like working a full-time job, especially as students are not only expected to have outstanding performance in each class, but also commit to extracurriculars. Below, multiple students spoke to The Classic, sharing their perspectives on the difficulty of balancing all the demands that come with being a Harrisite:
“I’m in the Cross County team as well as Key Club and freshman grade leaders. I have track practice every day so I spend about five hours a day doing team sports. Key Club is around half an hour per week, Key Club and freshman grade leaders don’t require a lot of commitment like track does. For track,especially, I could use the hour of practice to do homework. After meets, I come home late and have to stay up late to do homework. I probably spend around two hours a day on homework and studying in total depending on the class. I don’t get to hang out with friends after school a lot because then I would have to stay up late to finish my homework. I try to study and do homework during lunch and sometimes I wake up early in the morning to catch up with any homework or studying. Sometimes I get overwhelmed but as long as I don’t procrastinate it’s fine. I like to read when I’m stressed or try to do productive things. Trying to do homework during lunch would help reduce the workload and stress.”
— Freshman Annabelle Kuroda
“I do track, robotics, and I write for The Classic. However, I don’t usually feel overwhelmed. I try to spend my time as responsibly as possible, which is how I limit stress. I avoid procrastination as much as possible, that way I get everything done, and still have time to do the things I enjoy. To add on, I choose my extracurricular activities because they interest me, so they also help me destress from actual school.”
— Sophomore Giuseppe Volpe
“Currently I am in two clubs and I have yet to join a sport but I am planning to. I feel like sports teams or academic clubs require a lot more commitment than regular clubs do because you need to do more preparation and maybe stuff at home, and the meeting times are generally longer. I always try to make time for myself, it’s kind of a break among the chaos that school can bring. I try my best to make a written list of things I have to do per day, and I try to follow as much as possible, so I have an idea of what I’m doing. I listen to music or talk with people that I know will calm me down, like my friends. If you struggle with time management, I suggest that you make a to-do list of some sort which specifies certain times, so you’re able to organize yourself and have a good idea of what you need to do, [and how much time that will take]. I feel like school will inevitably be stressful at some point because things will start stacking up especially in the middle of the year towards Regents exams and AP exams. I think that people should try to implement any sort of stress diminishing activity they can into their schedules.”
— Sophomore Beyonce Boahen
“I participate in fencing and in three clubs, and dedicate upwards of 8 hours a week. Fencing is a huge commitment, but it doesn’t make it less fun. On a good day, my homework takes one hour, but on a bad day, it takes up to five. I have time for personal interests, if they are something I can do at school, like playing guitar in band class or fencing at practice, but other than that, I don’t really get to enjoy my hobbies during the school week. I feel extremely overworked in school and I just wait for the weekend.”
— Junior Agnieszka Nalepa
” I’m on the [handball and swim team as well as Model UN]. A lot of people think that junior year is the hardest year, but senior year is the hardest year of your life. You have to do college applications, and let’s say you’re in a sports team you have to do that too, then you have to do schoolwork. Some people have really hard classes even as a senior so they can’t just slack off on their work; they have to spend a lot of time on it, especially AP classes. They have at least an hour of homework for each class. You also have clubs, and volunteer hours, which the school requires. I have free bands, so during that time I’ll hang out with my friends, but I don’t have time during the weekends to hang out with them. In the beginning of the month, I was so burnt out and overwhelmed from all my classes and workload that I got a mouth ulcer. I was literally bedridden; I just had to sleep, eat, and drink to get better. I suggest getting those monthly planners and putting reminders on your phone and laptop. You definitely have to think about how your schedule is going to work out. If you easily forget what you have that day I would get a monthly planner and write it down there. To cope with stress, I would watch my favorite comfort shows and play games.”
— Senior Hailey Ahn
“You know, sometimes it varies from student to student. I do know that many students here have a lot of schoolwork and it’s very time-consuming and I know that a lot of students participate in a lot of extracurricular activities. I definitely think it’s a balancing act and some students are more successful at balancing extracurriculars than others. We say to students that academic work should come first before extracurriculars.”
— Chief of Student Activities Jaime Baranoff
