I know a lot of students ask themselves certain questions while they are studying in school: Why am I in school? What do I want to do for a living? But, most importantly, if you are like me and the majority of undergraduate school students, you wonder one main thing when you find yourself overwhelmed: Why am I so involved on campus? I find myself wondering this when I end up helping other students with ideas for their organizations even though I barely have time for myself. But, despite that, I have learned a few lessons from being way over-involved.
1. How to manage my time
If this lesson isn't the most important, I honestly do not know what is. Sometimes you go to all of your meetings, practices, and interviews for new people in your organization and afterwards you probably need about a whole day worth of sleep. I know plenty of people who were so heavily involved, but could never grasp the concept of time management. For me, I was involved in so much and had to really consider my schoolwork, my mental and physical health, and also making sure I was doing everything for the right reasons. Being heavily involved can make you go cray, but also it teaches you valuable time management skills. (While making you go crazy.)
2. Discipline and Commitment
A lot of people may not think of this as a huge deal, but it definitely goes hand-in-hand with time management. Being a student-athlete definitely taught me this, but being heavily involved gave me an even better understanding of this. When you are stretched thin, and have to think about what is of the highest importance, that is when you learn both of these things. Discipline and commitment are so noteworthy for anyone who wants to be successful, and once again some people will not understand this concept. It took Mulan a good portion of the movie to understand it, and even then it was with the help of Yao.
3. It pushes you to be better
Whenever I entered into the Residence Hall Association as the Community Service Chairman, I had to step up the title. I had never held a executive position, let alone thought about residence life in general. After a semester of planning events and having a week dedicated for the residents of my hall I realized that if you will be pushed to your limits. You realize that even though you might not be the ideal person for the job, you will definitely leave your position, executive or not, a better person. After it is all said and done, you might even have some people applaud you for your hard work. I was chosen as the Residence Hall Association: Member of the Year when I got done doing all of my hard work! Obviously, Snape is happy for me.
4. Dealing with all types of people
This plays a huge part in what you will deal with when start working in a professional setting. When you first join an organization or club, you realize that there are a lot of different personalities. There are people that you will absolutely love and adore, and then there are people who you will not be the fondest of while you stay in said organization. It just seems that some people whenever they speak, you just want to fast forward past their entire conversation. Don't worry there are people like this everywhere, but the good news is being heavily involved on campus gives you the patience to deal with such people.
Being heavily involved has its days when it's unbearable, but, I promise you the development that you get is so worth it. All four of these things definitely help you in the real world, and you are more equipped to deal with people, and be an excellent problem solver!
