17 How Do I Use the Co-Curriculum?
Mable didn’t have many fond memories of her undergraduate classroom studies. Her memory was instead of long and dry lectures attended by hundreds of students at once, odd lab courses of which she could make little practical sense, and seminars on subjects so specialized that she had no idea how she’d ever use them. The memories made Mable shudder. But Mable did remember her co-curricular activities with great fondness. Indeed, Mable had thrown herself into co-curricular life. She played intramural sports, tried different clubs every year, and even dabbled in theater and the arts. If it weren’t for co-curricular activities, Mable was sure that she would have dropped out of college instead of graduating with honors. Co-curricular activities didn’t just make college tolerable for Mable. They made college exciting, rewarding, and fun.
Co-Curriculum
A co-curriculum is just what it sounds like: activities alongside the curriculum, offered to enhance the curriculum’s instructional goals. A co-curricular activity is one that your school offers and supports. Schools are intentional about their co-curriculum. They deliberately choose, structure, fund, staff, and supervise co-curricular activities to enable students to enhance their overall development toward curriculum goals. Co-curricular activities are generally optional for students. Indeed, they would be curricular activities, not co-curriculars, if the school required students to participate in them. Co-curricular activities are thus generally not for school credit. Yet many students participate in them anyway, throwing themselves into them with all their energy. And after graduation, some students call co-curricular activities the most-worthwhile things they did in their school programs. Consider enhancing your education and improving your studies with co-curricular activities.
Value
Students tend to value co-curricular activities because the activities integrate curricular knowledge and skills into embodied, holistic action. Co-curricular activities may not be exactly real-world experiences. But if not, then they nonetheless tend to replicate real-world experiences in a safe and secure school environment, which is all the better. A co-curricular campus theater experience isn’t Broadway, but it can feel like it. A co-curricular choir isn’t the opera, and a co-curricular orchestra isn’t the symphony, but they can feel like it. And an intramural flag-football experience isn’t the Super Bowl, but it can feel like it. Co-curricular experiences move the instructor off the stage and replace the instructor with the student front and center. Through co-curricular experiences, students find their personality, presence, and voice. If you sense the need to come out of your shell, test your voice, and develop confidence, try co-curricular activities. Explore them until you find one that encourages you to act with commitment and confidence.
Conditions
The conditions under which schools adopt and offer co-curricular activities gives them the value that students seek. First, your school should ensure that each co-curricular activity positively influences your mental, physical, social, emotional, and academic development. You won’t, for instance, likely find a co-curricular drinking, smoking, or swearing club. It’s the extracurricular activities that introduce bad habits, not the co-curricular activities. If your school is sponsoring the activity, then it should be safe, secure, and developmental. A co-curricular activity should be something you can even put on your resume or at least share at an interview if asked about your personal interests. Second, co-curricular activities generally involve no stakes. If you turn out to be lousy at it, who cares? You gave it a try, you may have learned something, and you may also have had fun. If you’re a poor actor, for instance, you’ll never win a tryout to give yourself a chance at acting. But your school’s theater club will surely give you a chance. And nobody will blame you for trying when your poor acting skills show through. To take on challenges and grow, we need places where we can fail safely. Co-curricular activities are that place. Don’t let your poor estimation of your talents keep you from giving co-curriculars a try. That’s their point.
Use
Students can use co-curricular activities for a variety of goals, objectives, and reasons. As the vignette opening this chapter suggests, co-curricular activities can be the reason that a student persists at school. If you find school depressing and isolating but believe that you should persist nonetheless, or if you’re in a K-12 program that you must attend to satisfy mandatory education but can hardly stand it, then give co-curricular activities a try. You may find the interest, activity, outlet, and fun that you might be seeking at school. Students also use co-curriculars to meet and form relationships with other students who share similar interests. Intramural, club, and competition acquaintances can become good supporters and friends. Students also use co-curriculars to explore their talents. You may suspect that you have a gift for speech making, science projects, physical strength, or swiftness of foot. Then go try out your gift in a well-matched co-curricular activity. Use co-curricular activities to develop a better sense of who you are and what you can and cannot yet do.
Skills
Students also use co-curricular activities to hone talents that they already believe they possess. If you’re naturally good at photography and video production, then go join a film-making club. You may find access there to better film-making equipment and may learn new techniques. If you’re already a trained musician, join an ensemble in a different musical genre than the one for which you trained, to expand your musical repertoire. If you’re already involved in martial arts, join your campus club to hone your skill against a higher or broader level of competition. If you frequently volunteer for community service, join your school initiative to serve an unfamiliar community or population and learn about new needs and how to serve them. Use co-curricular activities to stretch your reach, refine your skills, and add to your experience in an area in which you already have substantial experience.
Qualifications
Students also use co-curricular activities to enhance their qualifications and resume for their next opportunity, especially to gain admission to preferred educational and vocational programs. Co-curricular participation and success can add significantly to the credentials of students applying to prep schools, competitive undergraduate college and university programs, honors and specialty programs within those schools, and graduate and professional school. A particular co-curricular success may distinguish you as a candidate for admission to a specialty program where nearly all applicants have superior academic credentials, and the admissions officers must select on other criteria. You can not only build skill and confidence in co-curricular activities; you can also build a resume. Co-curricular participation can even distinguish you as a candidate for a preferred internship, vocational program, or job, especially because co-curricular activity is voluntary. Employers appreciate go-getters who do more than required or asked.
Mentors
Co-curricular activities can also be a sound way to find mentors who truly care about the activity and those who participate in it. Schools typically recruit and invite, rather than assign, staff members, alumni, or other qualified individuals to supervise co-curricular activities. Your theater club advisor likely isn’t doing it simply because it’s part of the job. Co-curricular advisors often have a passion for the activity and strong interest in promoting equal passion on the part of students exploring the activity. Co-curricular advisors may also have substantial relevant experience with the activity. Your theater coach may just be a retired Broadway actor, while a retired NASA scientist may just be your science-club advisor and a current district attorney may just be your moot-court coach. A mentor with substantial knowledge and skill about the co-curricular activity in which you participate can be a fantastic mentor to you, both for the co-curricular activity’s specific field and for life in general. Pursue co-curricular activities to meet and get to spend time with valuable mentors in fields of interest to you. It can be a rare opportunity to fall under the beneficent influence of skilled and reputable individuals who deeply care about you and the activity you like to do.
Networks
Co-curricular activities can also be a good way to develop a network of helpful contacts within a field. Fields like film making, theater, fashion design, graphic design, jewelry making, music and sound production, and conservation can be small, niche, and insular in different geographic regions. Making contacts, finding opportunities, and opening doors to those opportunities in those fields and regions can be difficult unless you know someone already respected in the field and region. Co-curricular advisors, coaches, and participants can be a natural network for contacts, events, and opportunities outside of your school. For example, your graphic-design club advisor may know a firm seeking a summer intern or may have nonprofit clients wanting students to do charitable project design work, out of which those students can build a portfolio. Or your theater-club coach may know of an intern opportunity at a major regional theater, where you could meet and work with skilled and experienced thespians, and work behind the scenes on professional theater productions. Value co-curricular activities for their network opportunities. If you can’t find an open door in your field of interest, seek out a co-curricular activity to see what network contacts it might produce.
Choosing
The above discussion should have given you several ideas for how to choose a co-curricular activity. Try a co-curricular activity to hone a skill you already possess, expand that skill into a related field, or determine whether you have a talent in that field. Try a co-curricular activity to see if you have an interest in that field or to further develop your interest and affinity. Join a co-curricular activity to make new friends who share your interests and to make network contacts within the field for further opportunities. Participate in co-curricular activities to encourage you to persist in your educational program and to brighten your day and mood. Pursue co-curricular activities for physical exercise, mental health, and social relationships. You might also, though, choose a co-curricular activity simply to accompany a friend whom you wish to support or because many of your friends are doing it. You don’t have to have an interest in the activity itself, which may instead be a conduit for healthy physical and mental activity and social relationships.
Limiting
While co-curricular activities have many things to recommend them, don’t overdo them. You’ve still got to make satisfactory academic progress through your school program. Diving into co-curriculars may make for a great school experience but only if you keep up your grades, advance, and graduate. The time you invest in co-curricular activities may help you focus your remaining time on your studies. Your co-curricular activities may give you the hope and energy to persevere in studies that are tempting you to abandon them. But if, instead, you find that your studies and grades are suffering for lack of time and attention, you may need to limit or curtail your co-curricular activities, to refocus your time and energy on studies. Indeed, your school may withdraw your co-curricular privileges if you fail to maintain your good academic standing.
Reflection
What have been your most-meaningful co-curricular activities? What co-curricular activities does your school offer? Which of those co-curricular activities seem interesting to you? What would you need to do to participate in them? What would participating in them bring you? In what co-curricular activities are your friends participating? Would you like to join them, or would they like you to join them? Do you have a talent you’d like to explore and develop or a skill you’d like to hone? If so, examine what co-curricular opportunities might help you do so, directly or indirectly. Do you have an ambition to gain admission to a certain competitive school or program, where a co-curricular activity on your application might make a difference? Would you benefit from a mentor who shares some of your interests? Or would you benefit from network contacts within a certain field, where your school has a related co-curricular activity available? What would be your best reasons to pursue a co-curricular activity? If you’re already participating in co-curricular activities, are you overdoing it to the detriment of your academic studies and standing?
Key Points
Co-curricular activities are voluntary and alongside the curriculum.
Schools offer co-curricular activities for positive student development.
Value co-curricular activities for your retention and engagement.
Use co-curricular activities to develop your skill and confidence.
Use co-curricular activities for healthy social relationships.
Use co-curricular activities to distinguish your qualifications.
Use co-curricular activities to find field and life mentors.
Use co-curricular activities to develop field network contacts.
Pursue co-curricular activities for a wide variety of benefits.
Curtail your co-curricular activities if interfering with academics.