When you were in school, did you play any sports, take lessons for anything or participate in any groups?

I was the artsy, science minded kid. I was not a sports player, at all. I hated Volleyball, Football, baseball, but did enjoy archery. Not a fan of having balls zinging at my face or running around a field in the mud.
I liked badminton because the birdies can’t hurt you. haha
I took a lot of at classes, science classes, like animal husbandry and oceanography and photography.

Wasn’t interested in joining clubs like drama. On my own time I loved riding horses, bicycling, swimming, skating.

Cross country and track. I wasn’t fast but it was fun. Co-ed sports and you spend a lot of time sitting around on the grass in nice weather.

Band at school and a regional youth orchestra. I played bassoon. It’s been 30+ years but occasionally I dream that I’m playing again.

I wasn’t a theater nerd but I was in a few school plays.

Photography was a habit. I had a home darkroom and carried a camera everywhere. I entered competitions and won a few ribbons. I wasn’t on the yearbook staff but I always had a few pictures in the yearbook.

I played baseball from kindergarten to high school. It wasn’t school-related though — it was a city league. I planned to play in high school, but I had to stop at fifteen because my mother said she would no longer give me any money for anything. Since I still needed clothes, and books, and transportation and pocket money, I chose to quit baseball and get a job.

In elementary school I tried violin, cello, and saxophone briefly. I was terrible at each.

I never joined any groups, but my good friend in high school was in drama club and I would go watch his plays.

In high school I did more extracurricular stuff than was healthy for me. I was so damn busy all the time.

Primarily, I was a band geek. I played the oboe. In addition to the regular band that mostly just practiced during school hours, I did a bunch of after-school band stuff: jazz band (where I played the sax – easy transition from oboe), “Christmas crew” (group of us that played Christmas songs at nursing homes during the holiday season), “trash can band” (literally drumming on trash cans – played at home sports events), pep band (played at home sports events). I also had a private oboe lesson once a week at my teacher’s house. All of this took up an insane amount of my time, but it was also my primary social group, so it was nice. In hindsight it was stupid though because between this and homework I had no down time and stress made my health worse.

I was an extra in one school play before deciding that was a bigger time commitment than it was worth. I was also briefly in the pit band for a school musical, but they didn’t have oboe music and expected me to be able to transpose from Bb clarinet music in my head, which I couldn’t do, so I dropped out.

I was in the technology club in high school. The big thing we did was go to an expo at a local community college once a year where we participated in competitions. Some of them required a lot of preparation, such as the catapult competition where you’re trying to build a catapult that can shoot farther than anyone else’s catapult, and we had to do the building ahead of time. Others were done entirely on the day of, such as junkyard wars where we had to build a machine to complete a certain task (e.g. cut through styrofoam using wind power) using only the shit you could find in a pile of garbage they’d put in the middle of the room. That should have been more fun than it was, but my fellow students in the club were a bunch of sexist dudes so. I stuck with it though.

I dropped out of track after trying it for about a month in middle school. I couldn’t deal with being in pain all the time and being expected to run on shin splints. I did no other sports. I am not an athletic person. Except ski club a couple years. That was just where they’d bus us up to the local skiing place and let us have at it. I’ve skied since I was a kid so that was a good time.

In college I decided I was not going to spread myself so thin and instead find one or two things and really commit to them. That was a good decision. I joined a comedy group and tutored differential equations. I made most of my friends through comedy and was a very good tutor. My senior year I also picked up mentoring through the office of disability services. They paired me up with a freshman with a disability and I met with him weekly to help him out with anything he was concerned about. That was great too.

I refused.

I was a Cub Scout in fourth and fifth grade. And I was an active Boy Scout from age 11 until I was 17.

My last two years of high school I was manager of the swim team.

I ran track and played softball.

Track and volleyball. Yearbook Club. Girl Scouts.

No, only as required. I preferred to use my un-proscribed time in my own ways, and always wanted more free time. And most of those activities seemed like mostly negative things, at least as an extra thing to be signed up for as an added commitment. If swordfighting had been offered, I probably would have signed up for that. I guess I did do an extra orienteering event, once. I would’ve done more of that if there were more available, because I actually liked it.

@Mariah I definitely see you as an over achieving type, you’re probably really hard on yourself a lot of the time.

I was in high school, I finally managed to ditch that attitude.

@Mariah Good, not an easy way to live.

All that

I took a piano class in kindergarten, for reason I don’t remember now. I only remembered the fun I had with friends rather than the lessons.

I took an art class in high school just to avoid the sport class. There was choice between sport class, art class and music class and I went for the art class because it was the best choice of all. I made an epic fail there. I just couldn’t draw in the same realistic way people could. And as for free drawing, no one looked at my idea and judged the drawing as a whole, they only cared whether my drawing style marked their expectation. As a result I was dubbed the failed one in that class and carried the label for a long time. If only the teacher saw my recent drawings and the praises from my friends…

I didn’t join any club in college. I had more to do, concentrating on studying and bonding with friends, I wasn’t that extroverted for them, and most of all I was cynical about those clubs. On my first day in college there was a opinion poll asking for suggestion for upcoming clubs. I named some clubs I would like to see and they never came. And many clubs were all about shallow socializing, selfies and boasting on Facebook to make you looked like you accomplished more than you actually did. Many students were that way when joining clubs and that was a petty way to get popular and of course I didn’t feel comfortable being around people like that. I preferred to spend my time on more meaningful and productive things.

I was in the Hemp Appreciation Society, where we came up with our own version of Muhammad Ali’s rope-a-dope. For some of us, it really was high school. ;-)

I was also a rope climber and rings dabbler on the Van Nuys (AKA Ridgemont ;) high gymnastics team.

I never enlisted in anything I wasn’t interested in. My folks had no idea what I was doing and barely cared

I was a Brownie and then a Girl Scout. In high school I sang in the choir on stage with the other singers. In junior high school I took acting lessons downtown with about ten other girls. Oh; in church I was a member of the junior choir and then the senior choir. And a member of the church youth group called the Girl’s Friendly Society.
I wish I had done a lot more.

When I was 12, 13 I wanted to join a non-school related softball team. I could hear them practicing and playing games somewhere across the creek in town. I wanted to play SO BAD. But my mother said “No.”

When I got into HS I joined track and volleyball and didn’t tell my mom about it until it was a done deal.

Basketball, piano, French horn, choir, 4-H, yearbook, FHA, Academic Pursuit team, speech team, school plays, community musicals, student manager for boys basketball. Yeah, I know. Kind of insane. But it was a small school in a town of 300. Not like there was anything else to do.