The Extracurricular Juggling Act at College

Undergraduates who must master an especially difficult balancing act are the student athletes. They are often engaged in time-intensive and demanding sports activities while trying to survive the pressure all other students face as well. They try to keep up with studies while practicing their sport seven days a week. Then they scramble to keep the pieces together when their team goes on trips to away games during long seasons, causing the athletes to miss classes. Practices sometimes run through the dinner hour, adding another level of challenge in finding good nutrition and getting adequate calories to regenerate the fuel spent during practice.

In addition to their desire to perform well in the classroom, these students may have the added pressure of performing well on the athletic field or arena. There is usually intense competition for spots in the starting lineup. One poor practice session, a fumbled football, a bad at-bat, or poor shooting on the basketball court can quickly erode the athlete's sense of self-esteem, his or her identity as an accomplished star (which they all were in their high schools), and the ability to stay mentally strong in the midst of all the other college pressures.

I'll share a recent story of a football player who is a good example of how things can so easily go wrong for college athletes:

As a high school player, Harry had won numerous division and state honors. He was heavily recruited by college coaches and decided to take an athletic scholarship to a powerhouse school three hundred miles away from his home. At the end of his first freshman semester, he packed his bags and quit school. His friends and family were shocked and wondered what could have happened to such promising talent.

Harry's coach wasn't so surprised; he's seen this happen many times before. "Harry was a good player," he says. "But he wasn't the best on my team. No matter how hard he tried, he wasn't going to be in my starting lineup as a freshman. But I have to admit, he was a hard worker. In fact, Harry put in too much time on his own in addition to our grueling team schedule. And that hurt his studies. I was told in October that he was failing two classes, and I immediately put him on mandatory study time, but that didn't help. This was a young man who was obsessed with what he saw as his failure on the field and just couldn't keep his mind on the books. I also think Harry was homesick. His dad had been his number one supporter, and without him on the sidelines, maybe Harry just felt too alone out there." Put all these factors together, and it's no longer shocking that this young man headed for the security of home.

Athletes like Harry are not uncommon. Even the ones who make the starting team struggle with pressures and expectations that can make it very difficult to balance the demands of school with those of their coaches.

I recently heard of a soccer star who loves the sport and her team and coach, but she finds herself under tremendous pressure during the long soccer season. She travels nearly every weekend for Division 1 games up and down the East Coast, often leaving on a Thursday (missing classes) and not getting back until late Sunday night or even Monday. She is exhausted upon her return, and she still has homework to do. That's a tough schedule for anyone.

Also notable are the disruptive schedules of members of the band, orchestra, glee clubs, student drama productions, student government organizations, debate clubs, feminist and political activities, and other activities that demand not only a lot of practice and rehearsal but extensive travel time to distant and time-consuming events. Many students take their involvement in these activities very seriously, and sometimes to the breaking point. This was the case with one ambitious news editor:

Larry had a high-achieving personality, and he tried to do it all. Larry took over as editor in chief of his college newspaper after the former editor abruptly left school. Larry knew the editorial staff was a bit disorganized and that the quality of articles had taken a dive over the past year, but he thought it would be easy to get the paper back on track. That naive assumption almost cost Larry his college degree.

"The reporters had no idea what 'deadline' or journalistic 'integrity' meant," Larry recalls with a sad shake of his head. "I would end up writing half the pieces myself and doing major rewrites on the pieces that  "borrowed' information right out of the New York Times. I was spending hours and hours every day (often until three or four in the morning) in the newspaper office. School work? What was that? Friends? I had no time for them, and because I was so tired and cranky, they had no time for me either. By the end of the semester, I had almost single-handedly saved the paper from disgrace, but the price was awfully high. I no longer wondered why the previous editor dropped out of school. My GPA plunged, and I ended up on academic probation. I want to be a journalist when I graduate, and so I thought this was an important life experience for me. Now I think I'll get my degree first and then jump into the real world of newspaper reporting."

A new editor took over for Larry the following year and no doubt is holed up somewhere right now, trying to keep the presses rolling, but at what cost?