4000 Questions: Question #20: In what organizations & extracurricular activities did you participate?

From 5th grade through my first year of high school, I was in band. I played, or pretended to play, the flute. In jr. high, our school (James Bowie) was so small that the jr. high & high school was all together in one school &, so, we marched together. Then I went to New Boston High School when I started high school & was also in the marching band. I hated band. Finally, after my freshman year I had finally worn my parents down & they let me quit. Everyone said I would regret it. My counselor, my parents, my band director, everybody. To this day, I believe quitting band was one of the best decisions I ever made. So, the moral of this story is, get advice from others but you must make the decision, you often know yourself much better than anyone else.

In high school I was more involved in extracurricular activities & organizations even though very few of them actually did much. I was in the National Honor Society (we never did anything), the Spanish club (we did nothing), some women's club that I can't remember the name of (this was the dumbest of all clubs & we only had one activity each year which consisted of hazing or being hazed...yes, very sophisticated), the science club (which we actually did take some pretty cool trips...Sea World), & the Student Council (this was the most active of the groups I was in). With student council, I remember we did some service projects like painting the parking lot stripes & working softball games on Sat. We also took the greatest of all school field trips to Washington, D.C. I love D.C. We had a great time but I was a total jerk to my sister on the trip & to this day regret the way I acted. When asked, "Is there anything in your life you would go back & change," I would always pick that trip.

I also wrote for the school newspaper but that was part of my journalism class so I don't know if that would count as extracurricular.

I did participate in UIL (a Texas state competition of extracurricular activities, for those of you who don't live in TX). I was on the accounting team. No, I wasn't that great, I just happened to be one of the smarter ones in my class (that isn't a brag, this was a "blow off" class & most of the other people in the class probably did not go to college, having said that, I learned a lot of great & useful everyday things in that class like how to balance a check book, I know most people who graduate HS without that knowledge, I think this class should be required to graduate) & my teacher liked me so he asked me to be on it.

While at competition, one student on the journalism team was going to miss the news reporting competition because he/she was in another competition & I just happened to be the only one present that had been in journalism so my teacher threw me into that competition. I ended up winning. She freaked out. She was like, "Why didn't you tell me you could write?!" I told her that I just wrote the facts that they gave me. She was so excited but shocked at the same time. I was kind of stunned & happened to be just a tad high on over counter allergy medications due to a cold (I had no idea allergy medication would be like speed to me). I later had to go to regional competition where I did not pass but it was still pretty surreal for someone like me who really didn't care much for "school pride" & all of that.