Do what you love or do what you have to do?

Heres something that I've been thinking about for a while..

Some people tend to choose to engage in extracurricular activities because they want to and other people choose to do them because they 'have' to.

So, which one do you do?

Today, after working out at UCSF with Jhom, we were talking about our career plans and she brought up about how people gave her shit for choosing to work with kids at Cameron house every summer when she should be working at an internship or something that would boost her chances of getting into law school. It started to make me think about the idea of how many of us choose to do specific things JUST as a resume booster and I started to get frustrated over it.

In high school, I used to get really frustrated when someone wanted to run for asb or school office just because it would 'look good on their college apps' instead of choosing to run because they think it would make a difference. I guess it's really hard to say because everyone is striving to be noticed and to stand apart but I guess what gets me is that it's not fair for person A, who dedicates their time to something they find meaningful and worthwhile to get looked down upon compared to person B who just randomly chose to do that job just so they can get noticed.

I find that college extracurriculars are different now compared to high school. In high school, you can get a teacher who can write a recommendation upon how hard you've worked for that specific club. Perhaps it really depends on the specific club at Cal, but I'm sure as hell that I won't be able to find a professor who can testify what I've done for calDB.

As much as I love committing to dragonboat, there are times where I wonder whether it is really worth my time 'professionally' or 'academically'. I'm sure it's going to look much better for a med school applicant to say that they've been..say President of AMSA compared to a CalDB captain for almost 3 years now and its frustrating to see that the application board probably would not take that work in consideration. Same goes for being on Pcomm and Excomm for APO. Those two things take a lot of time, especially pcomm and yet, how will that even be factored? Who can really testify what you've done other than your own peers?

Another reason why I mention this is because I've been trying to look for volunteering opportunities at the animal shelter or SPCA (would anybody like to join me? =) ) because I've been wanting to volunteer there for the longest time but haven't been able to because I was either too young and the place was too far to get to (it still is. Even the Berkeley shelter is still pretty far away. -_- ) . While I'm sure volunteering at a hospital would be nice, but if I don't find a volunteering opportunity that doesn't involve with working directly with patients or feels like i'm making an ACTUAL difference with the patient's life, I would MUCH rather work with sheltered animals than sit at an office filing my life away with medical documents (not saying that it's not a bad job but just..that not one of my preferred choices)...

But what gets me is that volunteering at the animal shelter probably wouldn't get any points compared to volunteering at the hospital, unless I decide to become a vet.

And yes. I know that you should do the things that you enjoy but..come on. I'm sure that many students at Berkeley know this and yet choose to slave themselves away just because their 'pride', what their parents tell them to or whatever. It's a fact that we know but sometimes, we just can't help ourselves from doing the opposite

SIGH.