Why Passion Outweighs Quantity in Aiming for Success

An article signed by Laura.

As Sixth-Formers, the greatest priority is said to be academics, however, what builds all our individual profiles are the activities, commitments and organizations that we dedicate our supplementary time to. As a thoroughly-involved pupil in student organizations and the schools’ community, I can talk out of experience saying that management and prioritization is an on-going, never-ending battle.

The most crucial step to success is careful selection. The moto ‘the more the better’ fails to be applied here as a genuine passion for a CCA or commitment is much more relevant than choosing something for the sake of having done it than to write it down on your CV. When selecting certain engagements, you will proceed in spending valuable and even crucial time away from your studies. Therefore, the choices made should be things that either develop you as a sociable human being, focusing on an important skill that can be elsewhere applied or explore an area that you are interested in or passionate about. The requirement that BSB demands from its students is to choose two CCAs. The point is clear: that is enough. As a student who has multiple out of school commitments such as external exams and sport and takes part in school organizations which include the student council and the charity prefect committee, I can firmly state, basing myself on first-hand experience: two CCAs suffice. As prodigious as the nametag ‘overachiever’ might seem at first glance, it is not something to be aiming for. It can lead to a decline in academic performance, a fall in concentration levels and result in something as bad as emotional break-downs. The aim here is to balance everything out.

“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation”. The commitments you chose to dedicate your time to today, shape the person that you will be tomorrow. If you hate sport, there is no reason to be wasting your afternoons on the football pitch just like if you love writing you should join a literary group or spend your time writing prose and poetry. At the end of the day, what we spend our time doing defines who we truly are, and our aim here should be to become as interesting and complex a human being, as possible.

November, 2019


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