These days, university students are being obsessed with doing something more than keeping a high GPA. They think it is necessary not to lag behind other students. They search for an internship at a big corporation, an exchange program, volunteering, forums and so forth.
However, the problem is that many university students are doing this not voluntarily, but mandatorily. While most of these extracurricular programs aim to help students find their aptitude and adjust to the real working places, students take part in them just to fill up their resume. As a student who have participated in various extracurricular activities, I have seen lots of these cases so far.
When I participated in an internship as a staff at the international events hosted by the National Council of Youth Organization in , I met many people from the world, including as well. Since this organization holds international events annually, there were a lot of applicants too. I was in charge of participant management, so I had many chances to interact with them. Interestingly, some of the Korean participants did not seem to be enthusiastic in participating, compared to participants from other countries. When they are in discussion about the world issues as a part of the event, some of them seemed to be less knowledgeable and interested in the issues. Rather, they wanted to relax. It was very disappointing for me and other staff members who prepared this event for more than a month.
Not only this, but I also noticed other cases when I took part in other programs. One of them was a volunteering program to participate in language translation, assist the whole process of some events, and so forth. There was a high competition for getting this volunteer work, but interestingly, many people did not know what the hosting organization mostly does. Even worse, some people did not even know what they are going to do in this program. They seemed to just want the certificate of participation in that program because many promising work places need applicants who are full of experiences.
However, many working places do not want passive people. It is obvious that those people would fail in their real work places because they lack the willingness and responsibility.
Hence, rather than participating in many programs just because of the “pressure,” students need to participate in what they really want and are interested in. If that is so, they will be more willing to actively participate in those programs so that they can meet the hosts’ aims.