The oppertunity cost of extra-curriculars

With play opening on May 1st (you should all come see it...hopefully it will be amazing) and that being the last day to get deposits back, I find myself wondering if the stress and time constrants of extra-curriculars are really worth it? For the next two weeks I have play rehearsal or a performance almost every night but I still have to do all of the work for my AP classes. Some believe that the purpose of extra-curriculars isn't to enjoy being with your peers and develop social skills; it's to put them on a resume for college or scholarships. The oppertunity cost of participating in extra-curriculars is a lose of time to study or work. While most of us will get scholarships to college, we still have a lot to pay for. A hidden benefit of extra-curriculars however, is developing time managment skills and creating a "well rounded" candidate for colleges and scholarship committes to look at. Usually people do extra-curriculars because they find them interesting or relate to a topic they want to study or work in; occasionally their are a Paris Geller (Gilmore Girls reference) who only do things to put them on their resumes. Extra-curriculars are wonderful and fulfilling. Just remember the next time you're on a bus coming back from a match or complaining about the long practices...you had a choice to have more independent time and you chose to participate in this activity instead.

Credit cards and Obese America

So, I was looking for an article to blog about and I just had to pick this one. It asks the question, is the convience of using a credit card at fast food restaurants making America even more fat?

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Banking/CreditCardSmarts/CreditCardsCanMakeYouFat.aspx

In consumer math we're discussing the "evils" of credit cards and how much they can mess up your finacial success. True, for big perchases credit cards are convient but if you don't pay them off you can end up paying more than whatever you "saved" by using your plastic. The article deals with the externality of credit card use at fast food restaurants. Using plastic instead of cash is convient (yes...I'm guilty of this) but it could be a lingering factor in the correlation between the easy of access to fattening food and the level of obesidy in America.