Over the weekend, I watched the movie classic, Rushmore. For those unfamiliar, the basic plot is a hyper-involved high school student, Max, falls for a teacher while getting kicked out of school for bad grades and abuse of power. There’s a montage in the movie (see below) of all Max’s extracurricular activities that he’s either a part of, or started himself.
Not seen in the clip is that at the end it cuts to his report card, showing he’s doing poorly in every class. This got me thinking in two different directions…
1) Can a student leader be too involved?
If you work with student leaders, you most likely know at least one student that is trending in this direction. They start off being involved in one club, but by the end of the year, they are leading three and a part of four others. They can’t get enough of “life outside the classroom” and all looks great from your seat as the head of student activities because this student is hyper-engaged. Then, you start to hear that they are slipping in their grades. It’s like a star quarterback who gives 100% of his time to the team, but fails every class. A bad coach would just focus on the fact that he is helping the team win. A good coach would see his star player is failing elsewhere beyond football.
If I were to graph it, I think it’d look like this…
So, what is the right amount of time spent in extra-curricular activities that maximizes the value without hurting academic performance? My guess is whatever the amount of time it takes to be involved in one to three clubs. I’m hoping someone reading this can point me to research on the topic of when too much is too much.
2) Who would I rather hire?
The second direction of my thinking is related to the person I’d most likely hire if four different students, as seen in the graph below, came to me for a job.
Student #3 would be the easiest to dismiss in an early screening because they were neither academically successful or involved in extra-curricular activities.
Student #4 would probably get a pass from me because, even though they excelled academically, they didn’t display any usage of their knowledge. It’s one thing to be smart, it’s another thing to be able to do something with your smarts.
Student #2 would be the most obvious pick because they showed they can manage a massive work load on multiple fronts. They display the ability to be book smart and street smart (which is what I think co-curricular activities teach a student). Student #2 would be the shining star, though I think this type of person is an extremely rare case.
Then there’s Student #1. This is Max in Rushmore. This is the wildcard in the application process. He/she could be a creative genius who loves to make stuff happen and doesn’t care for the “game of school.” He also could be extremely aloof and forget the purpose of the role he’s in. If I had to pick between Student #1 and Student #4, I’d prefer Student #1 because he/she shows action with real-world results.
So in the end, if I could only interview two, I’d probably choose to interview #1 and #2. Unless I were hiring for a very technical position, (doctor, mechanic, etc.) then I’d probably pick #4 over #1.
What about you? If you could only pick two to interview, who would you pick and why?
