What if one day your principal made an announcement and said that all students must participate in at least one extracurricular activity. What would you do? Would you be filled with joy and help implement this new found rule, or would you rebel and cause a ruckus in the school system? Either way my standpoint on this topic is to help and not cause a fuss. As a student roughly in the middle of my school career, attending extracurricular activities have always been a part of my life and they have helped because they make friendships and bring others together, they teach us skills at a young age that can and will be helpful in the future, and it is an amazing, safe, and controlled environment to learn and have fun.

Extracurricular activities bring people with similar interests together and thus creates friendships. In elementary school I participated in the school play, it was so much fun performing a show and preparing for the show with the many practices. Each time we had a practice we would have to go around the gym and each meet a new friend. Each time I did this I would go out of my way to find someone who was looking sad or in a bad mood. This in turn made everyone in a better mood to have more fun. Most if not all extracurricular activities have a way that brings others together.

All extracurricular activities have a purpose for having them, most of the time it being learning a new skill. In seventh grade I was apart of the student council or SCA. In the student council we learned how to plan and control an activity, we learned how to be a leader in many scenarios. As we learned to be a leader we also got to have fun and use our skills. In a normal middle school classroom, we would have to intake a lot of information and then spit it back up on a test or quiz. In extracurricular activities we get to use our skills to actually learn, and learn information that that will be useful in the future.

In the world today it is harder and harder for kids and students to find a safe environment to grow up in and spend most of their time in. There have been a couple times where because I was a part of an extracurricular activity I could escape others asking me to do the wrong thing. Because of extracurricular activities I have grown up in a place that accepted me for who I was. If I did not have extracurricular activities I would probably be getting bad grades and skipping class, just because the people I would have affiliated myself with.

As a student of nine years extracurricular activities have helped me become who I am today by bringing others together and making friendships, teaching new skills that I can rely on in the future, and creating a safe space to learn and develop as a human. I have met so many deer friends because of extracurricular activities and I am still friends with most of them. I have learned new skills and also built upon former skills with extracurricular activities that will help in the future. Extracurricular activities have given me a environment that is safe and comfortable to learn and develop myself in. Overall extracurricular activities have taught me a lot about the world and myself, I will continue on my journey that is life and participate in extracurricular activities as I learn and grow.