<p>Next year I will be a senior and I have been offered a position on my Student Council as Vice President. In order to do this job correctly, I have to drop all of my sports. The job is very demanding, but I know is very rewarding. I am just wondering if this change will affect my chance of going to USNA. I love both Student Council and sports and wonder what I should do.</p>
<p>I do not understand why you cannot do both; most SGA members at DS's school are also athletes. You may want to re-evaluate your thought processes on this one.</p>
<p>My school's Student Council is much different than SGA's of other schools. As vice president, i would oversee 2 different committees, officers, class representatives, attend school board meetings, along with separate responsibilities. Meetings would be one committee on monday, representatives on tues, officers on wed., executive board wed., another committee on thurs., and usually not anything on fri. Our student council is a gold council of excellence and we are very serious about what we do. A sport would be impossible. If I do accept, I intend to do the job correctly and to the fullest of my ability, which would mean no sport participation.</p>
<p>cris2005,</p>
<p>Our son had exactly the same dilemma. As a swimmer (swimmers train year-round) he was in the water for 4 hours a day, as a student he was taking all of the APs possible. He did not feel he could give he requisite time to student council, Academic Decathlon, etc. and he did not have any of these on his application. He did, however, serve as the senior swimmer delegate to his team, his area, and the state and represented Alaska at the San Diego conference for FINA, the governing body of swimming, so that may have compensated. Anyway, he was appointed to USNA, will graduate on the 23rd, and is heading to Pensacola in Sept. </p>
<p>I would counsel you to do what you do well, and to have a well-thought out response to why you made the choices you did. USNA is all about prioritizing and making difficult decisions. </p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>Edit: Remember, too, that the best leaders do not try to do everything themselves, but also put the best people for each job in each position. I commend you thought processes on this. Although I initially disagreed with our son's decision on this point, he was adamant once he made up his mind and he was correct in his case. You sound similarly driven and intelligent. Go with what you feel is right.</p>
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Next year I will be a senior and I have been offered a position on my Student Council as Vice President. In order to do this job correctly, I have to drop all of my sports. The job is very demanding, but I know is very rewarding. I am just wondering if this change will affect my chance of going to USNA. I love both Student Council and sports and wonder what I should do.
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<p>As a BGO, here is how I would suggest you approach this issue if you were one of my candidates. </p>
<p>First, what level of sport have you participated in to date? Have you been a varsity athlete? In what sport? Are you physically fit and confident you will do well on the CFA? The key question is whether you can demonstrate a commitment to sports and athletics based on your first three years of h.s. If you can, giving up sports for a great leadership position may be palatable to USNA.</p>
<p>Second, what type of leadership will you be exerting on Student Council? Will you be in charge of certain events or projects or merely sitting in on committee meetings? IOW, can you quantify your leadership in terms of specific accomplishments? Also, what leadership positions have you already had? </p>
<p>As someone noted above, USNA is all about hard choices. If you decide on the Student Council position, I would suggest you do your utmost to engage in some form of (preferably organized) sports. Maybe you train for and participate in a triathlon. Maybe you participate in a weekend soccer league or judo class. Anything is better than nothing and allows you to tell your BGO and nominating committee that, despite your leadership position, you still make time for some athletic activity.</p>
<p>If you stick with sports, look for other opportunities to lead. You can be team captain. Or hold a position in a school club. Or be an Eagle Scout. Or . . . the opportunities are endless. </p>
<p>Whatever your decision, be prepared to explain it. Don't memorize an answer, but think about why you made the decision you did and be ready to describe that thought process to others.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>I think you should suck it up and do both... But that's just me.</p>
<p>Freshman year, I ran long distance in track. Sophomore year, I ran long distance in track and played tennis as a varsity replacement. Junior year, I ran varsity for track and earned a varsity letter for tennis. The type of leadership I will be exerting on student council would be greater than that of most club advisors. I would be dealing with students everyday and be working with my advisors everyday in order to maintain a functioning student council. Until this point, my only leadership position has been as Public Relations officer. And JackTraveler...as for your comment, you cannot do both sports and the vice president position. The position takes up a lot of time and conflicts with sports at all times. Going to both would be unfair to the student council members and to a sports team. Making commitments that cannot be fulfilled is unfair and I would be letting both down. On an average day, I would be spending four hours working for Student Council. On an event day, I would be spending 10-12 hrs. working for student council, so doing both a sport and student council is impossible, so there's nothing to "suck up."</p>
<p>BTW, I have decided to take the vice president position because I feel that on a whole I can significantly contribute to my school more than participating on a sports team and making the sacrifice of something I love in order to make change is more important. Thank you all for your advice.</p>
<p>Maybe you can also show some creativity and still be involved in sports AND Student Council. I don't know your school or what exactly you do, but just based on your description, it sounds like you have a very large number of Student Council meetings. Are these really of value or do various groups each talk about basically the same things only to have your faculty advisor finally make a recommendation? Do 10 people on a committee make a better decision than 5 or does everything just take longer because so many have to talk and be heard? Are the groups results oriented, do they have an agenda, assign owners and follow-up until tasks are complete or do they just have rambling discussions about nothing in particular? In most schools, there are a finite number of set tasks that need to be accomplished.</p>
<p>No one is impressed if you show a resume that involved "being on lots of committees". Instead, strive for results. Be creative, come up with ways to combine and/or reduce the number of meetings and therefore accomplish more in less time. Someone also suggested you don't have to do everything yourself. Learning how to delegate is also part of learning how to be a leader.</p>
<p>Ultimately, you need to look at the end result of SC and decide the best way to accomplish those things in the most efficient way.</p>
<p>This sounds like get a grip time to me. I confess to a bit of cyniicism about any student council position, especially a VP slot that would exclude all other activities. Sounds nuts to me. My council would be to stick with the athletics. Student Council officers are nice and a dime a dozen. And my own impression is that it won't look good quitting athletic endeavor your senior year ... no matter how you try to explain it away. And one thing you can be guaranteed ... there is not a school on the planet that moves forward or otherwise on the back of a student organization. This sounds like a faculty advisor's nightmare ego run amuck, imo.</p>
<p>I have been in student council and sports for three years. I would do both sports and student council if possible. The Student Council meetings are numerous, but very much needed. Each committee and group has different jobs and have very much independent of one another, but still help one another when their events come. The meetings are organized with agendas and committee chairpersons with at least one advisor overseeing the meeting (we have two). We believe that ideas are great and all, but actions mean much more and that is what we do. An example of one committee alone is the School Events Committee. Over the year, this committee organizes all of Homecoming (which consists of Spirit Week, Games Night, Fall Ball, etc.), Tailgate (strange I know, it's a rally for the rival football game), An Award Show (where there are live performances, awards, hosts, skits, etc., which requires training in using the lights, projectors, speakers, etc.), Coffeehouse (setting up a stage in the main hallway, organizing performances, working with the art department, etc.), Basketball Tournament. This committee organizes all of these events and still helps other committees with their events, which are equally time consuming...so it is impossible to do both sports and student council. And meetings usually only take an hour, work session is usually for two. Committee members actually do much of the work, but so does the president and vice president.</p>
<p>Hear ya loud and clear. </p>
<p>IF you want really want an opinion vs. an endorsement or defense of a decision some would consider questionable and you've already made, your quitting athletics will be difficult to defend, and my own recommendation is don't try to defend your position as you have here. You'll snooze lose your audience about the time you're trying to persuade someone how important and essential that 97th committee meeting was. And you will have confirmed my suspiscions. Good luck with all those committees. In any case, you'll be ready when your church nominates you to the buildings & grounds committee.</p>