The benefits of participating in club activities are not as many as those of academic st

udies.

Adolescents are in their crucial stage of development and every experience during this time
acts upon as a stepping stone for later life. Therefore, students have to make right choices w
hich activities they should spend time on. Some people insist that participating club activities
would enrich students’ lives and provide invaluable opportunities as academic studies do so
cialize with different people. In my opinion, however, students should invest more time on ac
ademics as it has far more advantages in the long run. Firstly, academics could act as signifi
cant determinants for students’ career paths. Second, club activities could be time-consumin
g and exhausting in various aspects.

To begin with, maintaining solid academic performances could act as great tools to raise the
standard of students’ future careers.This is because, majority of admission officers from univ
ersities and firms select their candidates based on the academic records of their applicants.
Academic results are strongly correlated with students’ diligence and effort they put on studi
es. Having decent academic results could make students more attractive to employers as th
ey could be presented more willing to accept diligent and hardworking candidates. This is w
ell illustrated by recent statistics from the Ministry of Employment of South Korea, which stat
es that nearly 80% of multinational firms prefer applicants with GPA above 4.0 than those wh
o attained lower university GPA. As the labor market is becoming fiercely competitive, withou
t any doubt, achieving good academic results is the key factor that leads to higher chance of
getting employed. Accordingly, attaining good academic results has more benefits than any
other activities.

On top of that, attending club activities could be unnecessarily demanding and exhausting. It
is because, club activities require their members to attend club sessions regularly and even f
orce them to join their annual activities regardless of their time. Although meeting and sociali
zing with new people in clubs could be somewhat enjoyable, student members may run out
of time to spend on other aspects of their lives such as studying or spending time with their fr
iends. Taking myself as an example, I joined a tennis club when I was freshman in high scho
ol. I was truly excited to see students who enjoy playing tennis as much as I did. The coach r
equired me to attend mandatory training sessions in the morning everyday. Consequently, I
was always full of fatigue during morning lessons as I could not sleep sufficiently. After the fir
st semester, I was completely drained out and had to quit the tennis club to recover my healt
h. Despite the temporary enjoyment that club activities could bring, the long-term effect was
not desirable at all as I was completely exhausted. Thus, attending club activities is not as b
eneficial as concentrating on one’s academics.

Without any doubt, the increase in quality of secondary education has led to expansion of va
riety of school clubs. Some educators assert that school clubs play key role in helping stude
nts develop ability to socialize with others. Still, this is highly misleading, as I think student’s
academic is far more significant for students due to exhaustive nature of school activities an
d potential significance of academic in labor market.