Extracurriculars are activities that generally take place after school hours. These activities can range from clubs like Jazz Band or Latin Club to sports like Soccer or Basketball. Students stay after school to attend activities such as these for fun. Making these activities mandatory could create health problems in some students, take valuable time away from students, and ruin the fun of extracurriculars.

For some students, just being in a school building can give them anxiety. Making them stay after school to participate in extracurriculars would worsen this anxiety. Some extracurriculars even require extra work outside of school, adding more stress to the stress students already edure everyday at school. Requiring students to participate in extracurriculars would affect the attitudes of some students, since they are being worked harder than usual.

Some students' parents can't get off work early to come pick their child up after extracurriculars. Some students have siblings that need to be taken care of after school everyday. Extracurriculars take time away from student to finish their homework. For some students, it can take several hours to complete a single homework assignment. Students would have to stay up later to do their homework making them tired at school the next day.

Mandatory extracurriculars would create overcrowding in clubs, given that more students would be attending them. Some clubs have limits on the amount of students allowed in the club. More teachers would have to stay after school to accommodate the amount of students in extracurriculars. This change would take time away from teachers who have to grade our school work after school, causing them to have to work in their usual free time.

Overall, this decision would change the entire idea of extracurriculars, making them seem like actual classes instead of the fun activities they are supposed to be. I believe that making extracurriculars mandatory for all students is a bad idea. I think participating in after school activities should be left to the choice of students and not teachers, and I hope this essay has made you feel the same way.