Leaving the High School Activity Behind

Looking back on high school is something that brings on a complex wave of nostalgia, resentment, frustration and comfort, all of which you expect to a certain degree after leaving. But one emotion I didn’t anticipate was how easy it is to be impressed with the schedule you maintained as a high schooler. In particular, I’m still amazed by the fact that I routinely spent 18 hours of my weekend competing in speech and debate tournaments. I can remember the exhaustion at the end of every one of those days and thinking to myself how happy I would be in college when I didn’t have to compete any more.

Once I had finished and finally freed myself of long tournament days and daily practice, I realized that dropping the activity that had been such a huge part of my life for four years wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought.

But no big deal, right? ASU has hundreds of clubs, dozens of sports, and a million other things to do. Even if it isn’t exactly the same, you can definitely find something that’s similar enough to what you had that it’ll satisfy that competitive or creative edge you’re missing.

Not really. There’s something sacred about a high school extracurricular that you don’t realize until it’s gone. Your world is so much smaller before college, so something like a team or club can really feel like a massive part of your life. Once you get to college, that changes. Suddenly your classes have very little overlap, your schedule changes everyday, and how busy you’ll be varies wildly from day to day and week to week. Before, you would know how and when your day would end with near certainty, so an activity was easy to work into the predictability of your existing schedule. Even if your interest transferred from high school to college, it is likely going to become far more difficult to participate in it and maintain your passion for it.

For me, the struggle came in the form of complete elimination. Speech and debate may exist on college campuses, but the events within the activity are pared down substantially. To the point where the remaining events I could have participated in were things I was either disinterested in or outright disliked. So what had once taken up ten to twenty-five hours of my life every week was all but gone.

I had a couple of options at that point. I could attempt to work my way into the college speech and debate scene despite the stark difference to what I knew before, I could go off in search of another activity more similar to what I was familiar with, or I could pursue another interest entirely.

The first two options are what most people gravitate towards. But I would really encourage you to really think about what it was that appealed to you about the activity in the first place. Did you need a physical activity or a creative outlet? Did you need a team or a space to work individually? Asking yourself these kinds of questions can help you figure out what kind of activity is best for you.

I realized pretty quickly that speech gave me two things: a community I loved and a creative outlet. Creative outlets are in abundance at ASU, so it was easy enough for me to find a group that allowed me to pursue my passion for writing.

It was far trickier to navigate the loss of my team. If you’re having a similar experience, there’s really only one piece of advice that I can offer. Remember that you are never going to find a true replacement for what you lost and that the community you know is not truly gone. I love my writing club, but it is not the same as my speech team. Instead of looking for something I was never going to find, I simply reached out to the friends I had made while on the team. I do my best to stay in contact with them and everytime I do I feel a little closer to the high school experiences I value so much.

You might end up in an extracurricular you didn’t expect, and that’s a good thing! Maybe your love of basketball has turned into a love of rowing, maybe your passion for student council pushed you towards becoming a community assistant. No matter what it is that captures your attention, I hope you can approach it with the same passion and excitement that your high school activities sparked in you. 

Claire van Doren, Junior, Journalism and English literature, College of Integrative Sciences and Arts and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism