I’m often asked if life, as a second year student, is less buy than it was as a first year. The surprising answer is no. Yes, I do have much more autonomy over my day and certainly I have the option of kicking my heels up a bit, but I think you’d find that most Tuck students feel the way I do: second year is just as busy albeit in different ways.
Let me count them:
1) Clubs: Tuck is small yet it has a large number of social, athletic, and professional clubs. Someone has to run them. That someone is second years.
Personally I am involved as a chair of the Entertainment, Sports, and Media Club and this takes up an enormous amount of my time. So why do it? That is the topic of another post, but in short I enjoy being a part of the media community at Tuck, I want to help fellow Tuckies find work in media, it is a great way to network, and it forces me to be actively involved at Tuck as a second year.
1a) Multiple Clubs: Many students help run several clubs. For example, a social and an athletic club. The latter are more purely “fun” but no less work. With hockey, for example, there is the issue of scheduling ice time, games, tournaments such as the annual trek up to Montreal in January, etc.
So why do people do it? Again, because it’s fun, it’s a way to give back to Tuck, and it’s a way to stay involved with classmates who share your interests.
2. Recruiting: Roughly half of Tuck students will go back to work full-time at their summer employers. The other half are on the job hunt. If you focus on traditional on-campus recruiting such as banking and consulting, you will spend your second year fall in interviews. The bad news is you jump right into recruiting after your summer; the good news is many Tuckies have jobs before the end of the year and can relax a bit. Everyone else does most of the major recruiting in January or, for just-in-time companies, like in media, the window stretches through the spring.
3. Teaching Assistants: Second years are also recruited to help Professors with grading and sometimes teaching review sessions.
4. Admissions Associate: Roughly 30 second years are very busy all fall conducting admissions interviews at Tuck. If you have already interviewed on-campus there is a high probability you met with a second year.
5. Socializing: This is the area I try to spend most of my time, though the first 4 often get in the way. As a second year you do not live on campus, so people are typically in apartments near Tuck or in houses a few miles out. Second year is a great way to get to know your housemates/classmates, but the class is a bit more fragmented so you have to make a commitment to being social.
This is not hard at Tuck, which has social events, speakers, and club activities every day of the week. But it’s hard to juggle it all. Personally I’ve started resorting to hosting dinners with my fiancee for small groups of friends: this forces all of us to commit to a date, it’s a chance to work on my cooking skills, and it’s a lot of fun.
In short, as much as I loved first year I am glad not to have to repeat the intensity again. I’m no less busy as a second year but I have much more control over my time–for better or for worse!
Read the full article: Is 2nd year less busy than 1st year?