What's the secret password?

Just to make the topic of this post clearer...

Club: a group of persons organized for a social, literary, athletic, political, or other purpose; an organization that offers its subscribers certain benefits, as discounts, bonuses, or interest, in return for regular purchases or payments

All my life, I've never really been much of a club person, other than the time my cousin and I set up a little clubhouse in her old van to plays cards and keep random thingamajigs in. I suppose this has something to do with my introverted personality and reluctance to meet new people. In fact, I have a reluctance to get involved with anything new or outside of my regular routine, but that's a post for another day.

For some reason, I just can't ignore this haunting scenario of me standing awkwardly in the corner while everyone is socializing and engaging in intelligent conversation. I am horrible at just MAKING conversation. IN FACT, this scenario is very much like my situation when I was in the UW Euchre club in the fall term of last year. I made one friend, and she was the only one that I felt brave enough to talk to because everyone seemed to know each other and have different favoured topics of discussion and interests from myself--and yet I still went because I just love euchre that much -_-" . The rest of the time, I felt awkward and out of place because everyone seemed to know each other pretty well, they have similar interests to discuss, and I didn't feel like I had anything useful to contribute to the discussions, other than "pass" or "spades, going alone". Again, my lack of conversational skills relates to my being out of touch with the world, a big part of which I will blame on the absence of cable in my house.

Throughout elementary school, high school, and even my first year of university, I always heard about clubs being advertised and all sorts of announcements for general meetings, but I never seriously considered joining any of them. I always found some excuse or other not to join whether I supported their goals or not. For some reason, I felt they were a waste of time because they were student-run. I thought, what could you possibly learn from other students in a club that you couldn't learn on your own? Besides, I can talk to most of these people in any of my classes. Only until this year did I even start to realize the importance of joining clubs.

To be honest, elementary and high school clubs are not so much a big deal. They are pretty closely monitored by teachers, and they hardly benefit society on a bigger scale. Yeah, I know, if everyone does a little, it becomes a lot--just like litter--but for the sake of this post lets separate theory from practice.

Side Note: an interesting thing my AFM prof said in class a few weeks ago, "In theory, theory is practice, but in practice it's not." Something about quotes, which use a few words repetitively yet succinctly, appeals to me.

Since I never really joined any clubs, I can only share my impressions of the responsibilities that the "execs" of these kinds of clubs have. As usual, feel free to express your utter outrage and disappointment in my opinions, minus the profanities please. So yeah, it seemed like these execs mainly collected money, took attendance, or announced dates of events--simple errands that my elementary school teachers would often select random volunteers to do. So how many skills or qualifications does it really take?

Back to secondary school clubs and earlier, the real value in joining them is to gain what I'd like to call "resume experience" for university clubs. "Resume experience" is basically when you hold a position or participate in something that doesn't really develop either your soft or technical skills, but on paper, the job title or tasks sound more significant than they really are. Really, you're just killing another inch of a tree trunk. Anyways, the point of filling up your resume with a bunch of elementary and high school experience is to make yourself LOOK more prepared than your peers when you enter university. When you enter university, the meaning of a club is a whole new story.

1. Networking
As much as I HATE this concept, it is sadly one of the keys to being successful in life. Yes, that also means suckups will rule the world (but this doesn't mean you can't still hate them ;) ). In university, you pretty much get scared into joining clubs because it's difficult to fill up your resume with actual work experience that will relate to co-op job requirements. Plus, you have to make sure the execs at least know you exist, in case you need reference letters or something. When I say networking, I don't just mean for academic or professional work purposes, but also social. By joining clubs or extracurricular groups, I made some interesting friends and witnessed a diversity of students that I would never have noticed otherwise. University or college is SO big that you don't really get a chance to meet everyone or at least see what they're like. Uni clubs are a great opportunity for this.

2. Exec positions
Unlike clubs in the earlier stages of education, clubs are actually FULLY student run, and students are always busy people. Thus, the responsibilities of the club are pretty well organized to fairly distribute various "housekeeping" tasks for the club amongst several members--much like the organizational structure of a company. I actually find this very interesting and useful for application in real life when you're out in the workplace. Having actually gotten involved in a club this year (first time in my life), I realize it's a lot of work and responsibility. To be honest, responsibility and real-life applicable things scare the hell out of me. I AM NOT READY TO GROW UP!! Thus, my natural coping mechanism is to pretend I'm playing house, store, or some kind of make-believe life game. That's basically how I dealt with my grade 11 accounting course, learning how to drive, cooking for myself, and being an Internal Relations Coordinator for the UW English Tutors. Btw, this reminds me of the good old elementary school days when I would feed my friends grass salad. Mm-mmm.

3. Fun
A lot of the clubs at UW are pretty random and obviously based on sincere interest in something (e.g. photography, swing dance, hip hop, ballroom dancing, and I believe I saw some sort of cheese tasting club Yummmmyy...). In high school and elementary school, I don't really remember a club being based on a random interest, except for anime club, but I refuse to count it! I guess since the school's population is smaller there is a lower probability that enough people will have similar interests in the same thing to establish a substantial member base for that club.

IF YOU'RE TOO LAZY TO READ THE WHOLE POST START HERE:

Clubs are important for filling up your resume and developing practical skills for living life. Believe me, if you plan on going anywhere in life, force yourself to join at least one club, and you may even be lucky enough to enjoy it.