We all know why we join the plentiful organizations and clubs at our respective universities—passion for what the club stands for. Oh, and because we need to pad our resumes. Graduate schools and jobs want to see that you’ve been involved and have had tons of leadership experience.

So last week, I was once again searching for more ways to get involved on campus, and ended up sending out applications for four different organizations that were interesting to me. I got an interview for one of them. The other three had “too many applicants and regretted to inform me that I had not been chosen to interview for a position in the organization.” In class the next day, a girl began to talk about how excited she was to have been selected for interviews to two of the organizations I had also applied to. It is worth noting here that she was already selected for several other organizations that I also applied to.

So why had this girl been called back and I had not? Maybe it was because of my answers to the questions on the application, but seeing as I had my application reviewed by a professor and a leader of one of the organizations and they liked what I had to say, I seriously doubt this. Maybe it was because her grade point average is higher than mine, but seeing as my grades are in top shape I again have my doubts about this being the reason. It seemed as though in many areas we had similar qualifications, so then what could it be? Oh right, her amazingly awesome involvement on campus earned her more involvement on campus.

It’s like when you have to have work experience to get a job, but you have to have a job to get work experience, but you can’t get that job until you have work experience, and so on. We are stuck on a devil’s carousel of failure. The people who break through the ranks are the lucky ones. The rest of us become the middle, and the middle is terrifyingly cemented just weeks after getting to school. It is hard to break from the ranks of the middle, because to do that you would need connections, but it’s hard to form these connections when one is stuck in the middle, and again the carousel spins.

It can be frustrating beyond belief to not be able to become as involved on campus as you had wanted to because the same people keep getting the positions you applied for. However, continue to try and maybe, just maybe, you will break from the ranks of the middle and get off this carousel.