When to start extracurricular activities
10 At-Home Extracurricular Activities!
hey guys are you stuck at home and
wondering how you can fill your time
because you're going to school online
and have been told or mandated by our
government not to leave or maybe you're
just an introvert and you'd rather never
leave the house but you still want some
extracurricular activities to put on
your college application well if so in
this video I'm going to talk about 10
different extracurricular activities you
can do without leaving the confines of
your home if you're wondering 30 on my
name's Brooke I have been teaching and
tutoring the SAT the ECT for over a
decade and a half I also am an
independent college consultant and I
help students shape their stories for
college admissions so that they put
their most awesome selves on paper if
you are also prepping for the SAT or the
ECT we also have a complete online
course that you can do also without
leaving your home and that's it's super
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cool okay let's get into this list first
a disclaimer don't stress out colleges
know you can't pursue everything you
love right now they are going to be
forgiving if your activities aren't as
amazing as they always were when you're
in quarantine so even the most elite
colleges are going to be understanding
of you cutting back on activities when
you're stuck at home please take this
whole video with a grain of salt we
don't expect you to be masterminds and
geniuses with every moment that you have
stuck at home when you can't do all the
things that you usually do that being
said some of you might be bored so we
made this video number
creative rating there's lots of ways you
could do creative writing you can write
novels you can write plays you can write
short stories even screenplays and you
can submit it online to places you can
try to enter it into contests you can
try to win awards with it I've had
students get short stories published in
anthologies in school literary magazines
or in other kinds of literary magazines
that accept submissions from teenagers
there's lots of different places and get
your creative writing published so if
you're really into fiction if you really
like to be creative creative writing as
an activity you don't have to go
anywhere to do cool number two
blogging and article writing so this is
like journalistic writing you can write
like a journalist from the confines of
your home again this is actually like a
WOW factor potential activity for a lot
of students especially if you're
interested in journalism and you can get
published in a local paper one way to
start that I really like is to write
op-eds which are basically articles that
somebody in the community wrote and you
can submit them to papers unsolicited
start with your local paper that's
probably the easiest one you can also
look for programs that support teen
reporters some newspapers have a columns
where they support teen reporters and
they solicit entries from people who are
in your age group so that's also
something you can check into other
things that you can write you can
continue if you have a school newspaper
at your school you can totally write
articles from home you don't have to do
it from the newspaper room and finally
the other kind of journalistic writing
that you can do is blogging you can
start a blog on any topic that you want
and write blogs about it I will say that
like as an independent college
consultant blogging is definitely not at
the top of my list of impressive
activities it's probably one of the
least impressive activities because a
lot of people have blogs and no one
reads them so if you're writing a bunch
of articles and no one's reading your
articles it's a much less impressive
activity it doesn't mean you still can't
do it and I know a lot of my students
just really enjoy writing and so they
enjoy blogging because it's fun for them
it's kind of like keeping a diary so if
you're looking for something to do I
totally encourage it I just again with
blogging I do use a caveat that if
you're not cementing a pretty big
audience with your blog it's not
necessarily going to be the most
impressive thing in the world
number three related but slightly
different
pretty logging you can make little
videos if you are at home and you don't
have to go anywhere
to do it what I would encourage you to
do is not a lot of people are
necessarily just interested in you
talking about nothing but you might try
to see is there some sort of niche you
can fill right with your V logging or
with creating videos of some sort is
there an idea that you can pursue can
you make videos about something in
particular can you make a tutorial
series of videos that have a particular
purpose or that help someone or they do
something you want to think about your
audience like how can you create value
in the world what kind of information
could you share with people that would
be helpful or useful and when you start
a V log that's helpful or useful or
interesting
that's the kind of thing that people are
going to gravitate toward and you're
more likely to get more attraction and
it's more likely to be interesting
number four
composing music if you're musician write
some songs that can be impressive and
kind of cool and I definitely have
worked with students before in the past
we have some interesting stories around
their journey he trying to compose music
and how that went and being in
communities on the internet of composers
and stuff like that so interesting idea
number five on the art train you guys
who aren't creative or like Brooke do
you have anything for me stay tuned I do
number-5 art you can make art and art
can be anything like physical art it
could be painting if you'd be drawing it
could also be digital art if you're
interested in graphic design you can
teach yourself graphic design or you
could try to teach yourself software
that helps you draw or paint or whatever
it is and get into digital art or get
into graphics of some sort you can also
maybe create graphics that then you
could do for a local charity or a local
business you could use your art in ways
that help other people or think about
people who could use art and then team
with them and then that could be another
meaningful way you could do art at home
number six scientific experiments aha
finally something that's not all
creative though this is still creative
science experiments are something that
have been a really cool wow factor on
some of the students that I work with
applications and what kind of science
experiments can you do well anything
that you would bring the school science
fair is up for grabs but just to give
you a few examples Josh who was an
intern in our company a year or two ago
did a cool scientific kind of robot
experiment that he describes in is how I
got into stand for video so you can go
watch his
to see what he did I've also had
students build robots that like fry eggs
and do other random tasks around the
house and those have made for kind of
fun interesting topics I have students
who've built rockets to try to go into
you know deeper in the Earth's
atmosphere and take pictures of the
whole thing which has been like kind of
fascinating and interesting I also had a
student a while back who did some
chemistry research that was really
interesting that was trying to solve
some particular questions with global
warming and she was able to like by
chemistry lab get stuff on the internet
to try to answer these questions and run
experiments and she could do that at
home there's all sorts of fun things
that you guys can do science experiment
wise and if you're stuck at home and all
you've got is you and your backyard and
online shopping this could be something
that you could turn into a really cool
essay when you apply to college or just
that would fill your time and that would
be fun to do that's also totally legit
like all of these yes you could put them
on your college application but it's
also something interesting to do when
all you have in front of you is online
virtual school and you're not allowed to
hang out with your friends number seven
remote volunteer work so I know
infamously in activities colleges don't
care about I say volunteer work is one
of those but I do put a huge caveat with
it which is the idea that like half of
you guys are doing volunteer work so
it's not a standout activity because
most of you are doing it and they only
want to make it a scene that activity is
to do it in a standout way that being
said it doesn't mean you shouldn't do
volunteer work and volunteer work school
but you can do remote volunteer work and
actually that might make for any more
interesting essay than real volunteer
work because how do you volunteer when
you can't go anywhere in person tutoring
I know I tutor online all the time I
don't see why you guys couldn't remote
tutors so if you knew students in need
or you wanted to coordinate a new
program where you can even start a
program at your high school cuz you've
got all these people who are probably
home and who can't go anywhere on both
ends of the spectrum both students who
could use tutoring and you guys could
you create a tutoring network that could
be interesting you could work for a
project like the Gutenberg Project which
needs lots of people to like proofread
OCR scanned texts you could also work
with like a non-profit and be their
social media person and probably do that
remotely especially because a lot of
companies are closed right now
depending on when you watch this video
but there you go remote volunteer work
or even work you can even get a remote
job number eight coding so coding can
take a lot of different forms that could
be app development
it could be learning coding it could be
website development it could also be
like data crunching I had a student a
while back who did a really interesting
like epidemiology study and she was
crunching data from a publicly available
database and just trying to see if she
could track certain trends with illness
and she ended up getting into a top-10
school using that as part of a fodder
for her essays and things like that and
I thought it was fascinating and really
interesting the kind of research that
she was doing so you can used to use
coding to do interesting stuff a lot of
people are doing coding so to stand out
in that field you really have to do
something original but you've got to
start somewhere and if you don't really
know how to code the first step is to
learn how to code and that can be a way
that you fill your time number-9 online
learning
now copy out with the online learning if
you are online learning in a way and you
want to impress colleges with it I
generally recommend that you try to do
something accredited but if you don't
really care about impressing colleges
and you just want to fill your time and
you want to do something valuable for
yourself you can use MOOCs there's so
many cool online courses and a lot of
its free you can even take classes from
like Stanford and Harvard and all this
stuff and you can learn online and it's
just a great way to spend your time and
to enhance what you already know again a
lot of students will put MOOCs as like
activities that they do on their college
application it's generally not a good
cornerstone activity because it's not
something that I can like follow up on I
can't leave verify that you did
everything the class asked you to do
most of the time you don't get a grade
for like a MOOC so it's it's not as
verifiable it doesn't mean don't put it
down if you did it but it's kind of
icing on the cake sprinkles on the
cupcake kind of activity but still can
be really valuable for you and your
brain then you can explore ideas that
interest you and that's where I would
say it's still potentially a very
valuable number ten would be making
things what do I mean by making things
well the sky's the limit and if you're
creative you can figure out something to
make making things could be building
something I have some students who've
written
how they've done construction work or
built things it could be making a
product I have some students who are
like entrepreneurs and who made an
invention and they like created the
prototype of the invention coddling
things together in their house heck you
can even make food got something you can
make I do I do have a student once who
got into an Ivy League school and she
was super passionate about cooking and
that's what she made she would make
these really elaborate dishes and she
wrote a whole essay on it and it was
really a fun funny essay about all the
elaborate foods that she cooked so
whatever inspires you if you are a maker
make something that excites you and
sometimes those can be really wow factor
things because it's so creative and it's
so unique again if you're trying to
stand out like doing something different
from everyone else is the way to stand
out and so think about how you can do
that if that's your goal and if you just
want to fill your time think about what
you care about you know and and find
ways to explore the world and explore
your own curiosity I hope you guys like
this video if so please give it a thumbs
up if you have other ideas that you
think I left out put them in the
comments below I know I'm severely
lacking in sports and I'm sorry I don't
have any athletic ideas for you but
maybe some of you guys do thanks for
joining us I will see you guys next time
ciao for now
