Chapter 38

Now, I would love to jump straight into how my second year went but I think I have to tell you about my extracurriculars first. Why? Well, in the previous highschool chapters you may have caught on that you can really truly define me by the hobbies I load my free time with. In univeristy, this would be no different. However, hobbies would become a part time thing.

Because they are a part time thing but still very important, I figured I would tell you about them now. I think this is best because not only will these part time hobbies be addressed in its entirety as to not intrude on the grind that will follow starting second year, but also because they serve as a great way to establish a bit more of the environment and landscape of my undergraduate degree.

Also, as I mentioned in the last chapter, I did screw up with time management in first year between the hobbies I wanted to do and my dedication to GPA. So how did that come to be really?

I’d like to consider myself an outlier in first year university. I don’t think I saw anyone else do as many clubs and councils to the degree of diversity as I have. I knew that all of my hobbies were about to significantly diminish in their precedence in my life as I adjusted to becoming an Optometry program hopeful but I didn’t want to simply let my hobbies die out without a fight. If you’ll recall, hobbies were my safe space. Classical music was a haven for me but other things like breakdancing and swimming also on occasion served as a mental roosting nest for me to let loose. While other students went off to the club, I went to join as many clubs as I could.

The first thing I did was sign up for the University of Waterloo’s Orchestra. I had planned this for a while. Next up? Of course I had to join the University of Waterloo Breakdancers. Breakdancing was a relatively niche thing to do. This meant that you often found yourself getting to know everyone in the scene pretty quickly through just meeting up at practice or at events. I was happily surprised that when university hit, I would see a lot of familiar faces. I felt right at home. 

After those two were out of the way, I then joined some other small clubs that I thought were beneficial for my future. This included the Pre-Optometry club, because I wanted to know all there was about applying for the optometry program, and the Pre-Pharmacy club, because the PharmD program and been my backup plan should I not make it into the Optometry program. In hindsight, these two clubs were really that useful at all. I realized I attended maybe 2 or 3 meetings at tops and never really got much out of them at all. 

Regardless, this brought my total number of clubs I joined in first year university to four. I’d like to remind you that I was a part of 3 orchestras, 2 choirs, the swim team, the breakers, numerous tutoring programs and also did part time lifeguarding in high school. This meant that a measly 4 clubs was a huge step down for me. I actually felt a bit of anxiety from doing so little. I mean, singing and swimming had been completely wiped off the face of my schedule! However, despite how low 4 may seem, I would say 4 clubs was actually on the higher end in relation to the average science undergrad. What could the reason be for such low attendance rates for clubs at Waterloo? I have a few theories. 

Let’s discuss these theories from the least obvious to the most.

Reason ONE: The World is Rigid

*Disclosure, I’m going to be exaggerating a few things about my high school to make a point so take the next passage with a grain of salt*

The first reason is separation of school, students and faculty. For all events that had any association with the music program at my high school, there was always a role that was played by the entire school. Our music teachers were always working together and coordinating with other teachers under what felt like a centralized governing system. In highschool, the music department had been so large and influential that our teachers of the other subjects sometimes even worked around the timing for tests and projects so as to keep them on days where there would be the least amount of absences due to a musical event. Let me put this another way, the music department had so many students in it that if an event were to happen that required the student’s attendance, the school got noticeably emptier for the duration of the event.

Here’s an example: 

The Grade 12’s were about to have a math test next Tuesday? Well, our music teacher spoke to the math teacher and now they will have to move that test to the next week because half the class were Asians who were good at math and music and the music department was sending them to Ottawa for a music fest next week. 

Was the Asian thing absolutely necessary to include in that example? Yes. If you’ll recall, the vast majority of my school were Asians and we stereotypically all loved to send our kids off to classical music training camps and math tutorial schools. The result? A huge chunk of our school was in music and also took all the math electives available. This gave the music department and the math department quite a lot of power, though the math department never hosted any events of any sort. 

The music department, on the other hand, had basically governed the scheduling of classes with how many students were under their thumb and how many events they were hosting. There were a lot of balancing acts done in highschool to accommodate for these events and for the most part, the other teachers in our school were on board. Is that surprising? I don’t think so. I think this only happened because our high school teachers were actually good at their jobs. That is to say, they cared about their students and the experiences they would go through. Knowing that music in high school really did enrich their lives, most teachers and to be honest, pretty much the entire school and faculty, happily offered to move things around so that their students could get that enrichment from music without it detrimentally hurting their grades. 

If I had to summarize this point, I’d say it like this. In high school, we had people watching out for us and our enrichment of experiences. Our teachers and school accommodated us to make it so we could get some special experiences and also learn the necessary things for our future. In university, this would be very different. 

The class sizes in university alone meant that if you wanted to alter any type of scheduling for any particular reason, it was near impossible. The teachers’ can’t care for you anymore, they had too many students needing their time. No one cared if you had band practice and had to miss a math midterm, you gotta solve that issue on your own. Oftentimes, this means that a lot of people, even the most dedicated to a club, will have to sacrifice attending that club in favor of their studies. There just was no work around. To be fair, this did simulate the adult realities of life we would all soon be enjoying. It was unlike in highschool, when you were young and hopeful and on occasion, could still have your cake and eat it too. 

Reason TWO: The Ever Looming Threat

This one is easily obvious. In science undergrad, your fellow classmates were all your competition. Everyone there was trying to get into Med, Pharm, Optom, or Dental. Your grades would be severely examined by all the admission boards in the future and with a larger class, you are more than likely to now fall into the average or even worse, fall under it. You have this ever looming duty to not only work hard and pass your courses but also to stand out from your fellow students. It was now no longer about how every minute spent studying counted. It was that every minute not spent studying also counted. It was time to do some time budgeting.

This meant that clubs were almost never a good thing. In your now limited budget of time, any amount of time spent in a club took you away from cramming and this risked you being left behind by the pack. While you were doing your club, your fellow schoolmates could have completed cramming for the next three tests and are on a trajectory to outclass you in GPA! Time was now a resource. You had to spend it sparingly on everything. Only splurging when it came to studying. This was in some form a test of will, how much did you want this admission? How much time are you willing to spend on this pursuit? 

Reason THREE: The Other Option

Now, you may be thinking, “hang on, don’t admission committees like to see extracurricular clubs on an application?”. You are correct. However, admissions committees like volunteering even more. Clubs were recreational and social. Volunteering showed you had initiative and a good moral character. So what does this mean? If you are really serious about becoming a doctor, should you really join a club for pre-optometry, pre-med or pre-pharmacy? Or should you just go out there and find a clinic, hospital or pharmacy to volunteer your time to slap that on your resume? More times than not. The latter was the better choice. 

This was immediately noticeable too. In first year university, a lot of Waterloo science students got volunteering positions at the Grand River Hospital, the local hospital of our region. A similar thing happened around the local pharmacy and optometry clinics though on a much smaller scale. I’m certain thousands of dollars were saved by those healthcare practices from just the sheer number of pre-med hopefuls trying to get a leg up on the competition. Despite the fact that these positions were non-paying, the locations that took in volunteers were actually contested. So much so that sometimes there were even applications to volunteer at certain locations. 

There is the theme of time budgeting in clubs vs volunteering as well and it’s simple to see. Since your resume is now a pretty big priority in your life, should you really join a club? Or should you hit up the local healthcare center for bettering your odds at your future professional school of choice? The reality of it is, you simply don’t have the time to do both. You had to choose between recreation and the future. Worse still, should you ever think about letting loose and choosing recreation, your fellow classmates would swoop in and take your advantage away.

Reason FOUR: The New Social Life

Some of you may have thought about this as the first thing on your mind and some of you may not have and that’s fine. It kind of heavily depends what kind of person you are. Regardless though, I’m sure you all know what I’m talking about. The last reason why someone might not join a club? That’s simple, you can now party almost endlessly. 

To put it simply, you could go out to a university club and meet friends there and work on your hobbies. This is a nice way to meet like minded people but it usually ends up just being a small group. While it was good for the actual hobby at hand if you wanted to do that hobby, it often didn’t act like anything towards socializing nor meeting other people. 

So what do you do if you just wanted to meet new people? You go to parties. This should come as no surprise to anyone. Just think about how many Hollywood films there are that are just about how college life is a huge party. 

I never considered myself a party goer and am even kind of proud to say that I have almost never stepped into a pub or a rave party as an attendee. They seemed fruitless to me but hey, if you like to party you do you. Despite not looking for parties, it was easy to find them. They were everywhere! Right after frosh week, it seemed like every weekend there was a new party at a new place. There were parties at your local pub, your dorm and sometimes even just at people’s houses. 

It was easy to see why there were so many. The demand for partying was very high. Girls wanted to socialize and guys wanted to get laid. Whereas previously we all lived under our parents homes and had someone watching over us all the time, we were now on our own. We could go out as much as we wanted, party as much as we wanted and some of us even drank as much as we wanted. When the night is over, you may even bring someone back to your place. Parties and get-togethers in highschool were definitely present but never out of hand because, afterall, you can only go so wild while living under your parents. In university though? The limit felt non-existent. 

You don’t just stop being a hormonal teenager the minute you enter university. If anything, your hormones get more out of control. This is also because since there are no parents around, you can bring any person home if you wanted. There is a much higher probability of getting laid now that you lived away from your parents. 

This was the final thing that university clubs were now contesting with. While university clubs had a hard time competing with volunteering at your local healthcare clinic in terms of benefit for your application to med school or wherever, they were having an impossible time competing with people trying to get laid. 

Sex is, well, sex. It was quite appealing. But you know what was just equally as appealing about partying? It was also just so easy to do. It was super non-committal. You didn’t have to show up every week to a certain place with a piece of music memorized like the Waterloo orchestra nor go to every rehearsal to learn the choreography for a performance like you had like with the Waterloo breakers whenever we got a gig. You just had to have some free time on your hands, know a few people and maybe own a bottle or two of alcohol. You could come and go into the scene as you liked. Partying was just so easy to get into. 

Sure it provided no aid at all towards any future career goals but these two facts, the easy barrier towards entry and the prospect of sex, easily made social life in university a heavy contender for your very limited free time. 

Whether it’s due to investing more time into your studies, resume or social life, clubs have taken a bit of a hit from all of these new avenues of time use. While none of these things were technically unavailable in highschool, it was definitely more different now. 

For myself, I did see the appeal in all of these reasons for not joining as many clubs as possible and on some level, my only joining 4 clubs was indicative of that. However, I still did need to join these clubs. 

At first I figured that my hobbies were just a very strong interest that kept coming back to me again and again because they gave me an avenue of stress relief. However, it would be way later on that I would find that my hobbies were something else entirely and that they run deeper roots into my own identity than I had ever previously thought. 

To know what I mean about that, you’re going to have to wait a while. For now, let’s continue with just the clubs I mentioned. 

I started off my first semester in university with the intent of only doing four clubs.