In your first days at Yale, most of you will travel to Beinecke Plaza for the Freshman Bazaar. While you stand admist a flurry of colorful fliers and noisy upperclassmen-turned-salesmen, your roommate could be miles away, logging her first hours of sweat in the gym toward what she hopes will be an Ivy League title.
With more than 250 student organizations, 34 varsity sports, 30 club sports and a wealth of intramural teams, the extracurricular opportunities for the average Yale freshman are endless. Now that you are out of the rat race that is high school, resume-padding days are over. Yale gives you a chance to find your passions and pursue them.
Sign up for everything you can. Yale’s student community service and activism center, Dwight Hall, is the only one of its kind in the country. The nationally renowned Angler’s Journal is your chance to edit a literary magazine with a fishing theme. And even if you discover that trout is a turnoff, you can always take two seconds weeks later to recuse yourself from the email list.
Your time at Yale is valuable, and you may find yourself devoting more time to your Dramat production than your Greek history term paper. Shared hours of late-night sweat under the lights of a Candide set can have the same value as the satisfaction from writing a thorough Thucydides paper.
So whether you’re fighting your way onto the fencing team as a walk-on or enjoying a quick intramural soccer game before dinner and an a cappella rehearsal, remember that while classes are important, your time outside of the Harkness table rooms can be equally vibrant and interesting.