Should students be forced to take an extracurricular activity? I don't take they should for many reasons. Taking extracurricular activities can increase work and responsibility, take time away from more important areas, or even cause stress. A student should only take an extracurricular activity if they know that they'll enjoy it. Otherwise, it can negatively affect the student in many ways.

Taking an extracurricular activity means more work, and considering the amount of work students already have, it can be overwhelming. Many students won't be able to complete all their assignments because of the extra activity. This can lead to lower grades and worst performance in other classes. Not only will students have more work, they will also have to manage their time in order to be able to consistently participate or show up for that activity.

You might be thinking that time management is a good skill to practice, in which you're not wrong, but it can also mean taking time away from other things in order to include something else. When students take extracurricular activities, they take away from their free time in order to put it in their schedule. Students use their free time to do their homework, relax from work, or spend with their family. This is pretty important for a student, considering that this may stress them out. This leads into our final reason.

The increased amount of work and responsibility, combined with managing time efficiently, can be enough to overwhelm student to the point where they get stressed. Students might not be able to keep up with all the work they get from their extracurricular activity plus all their other classes. As stated before, this can lower grades, and force students to take time away from those classes just to focus on their extracurricular activity. Stress is very serious problem already, and it can be beneficial not to force a student to participate in an activity that they don't want to do.

In conclusion, taking an extracurricular activity can have negative affects. It starts with unnecessary work, which leads to taking time away from other things, which finally leads to stress. Many students already do extracurricular activities, mainly because they enjoy it. But some students need time to focus on other things they might find more important, which isn't a bad thing. Students shouldn't be forced to join an activity, but they should always have the option to.