When you are headed into starting your college career or just getting your feet wet, one of the most commonly given pieces of advice is “get involved” or “get involved in a student organization.” Even college campus tours dole this information out as it seems hammered into each and every tour guide to boast to families how many student organizations are active on campus.

A commonly heard line? “We have over 450 student organizations on campus so you are bound to find at least one group that interests you, and if not, you can even start your own organization!”

To bait students, even more, there is always the standard student organization fair that is a part of “welcome week” activities where new students (and maybe some older ones too) get peer pressured into signing up for dozens of list-serves that they really have no interest in. All they are looking for is the free candy and maybe they will just happen to find one or two student organizations they want to become active in.

But what these innocent first-year students do not know is what is going on on the other side of that student organization table.

As someone who has heeded everyone’s advice and joined several student organizations, I can tell you that what goes on amongst leaders of student organizations is quite interesting.

Having a group run by students is fantastic and something that can be so rewarding. Joining a student organization can provide you with so many close friends because you are bringing together like-minded people.

But there is a difference between joining and leading a student organization and leading one is quite a thankless job.

The leaders of the student organizations are charged with keeping things together and making everything look and act like a well-oiled machine so that everyone who is a part of the organization can have a great experience. To create that experience though takes a lot of work.

Those fantastic events a student organization provides that may take you to cool places take a lot of communication between outside vendors to organize and put together.

College student organizations run on the budgets the size of college students. Our finance teams don’t have endless heaps of money to play around with. In planning out events, programming chairs have to be just as frugal as any college student to make $1200 stretch to cover brunch for 60 people.

Of course, we want more money than what we have, but our student associations only have so much to spread out across the over 450 student organizations on campus, but because we are committed the leaders of the organization will petition to get more funds.

Student organization leaders also have to engage with the rest of the student body in order to make things run. After all, what is the one thing student organizations need to be successful? Well, students. Students who are coming to meetings, who are contributing to events, who want to be leaders.

We need you and we want you. Student organizations who are just getting off the ground will do anything to get active members. This is one of the reasons why you’ll find overly enthusiastic leaders at the student organization fairs, bribing you with candy and shoving a pen in your hand to put your email down on the sign-up list. We hope that of all the invitations you get to come to the first general body meeting of the year, you will come to ours.

But while students can be a blessing (and they certainly are) they can also be a curse. Everyone has strong opinions and thinks they know what the right way to do something is. So, if they see a leader doing something “incorrectly” they are surely going to send an email or a text or some sort of communication telling that leader what they are doing wrong and how they should fix it.

From the leader’s perspective though, we appreciate your feedback and advice, but it’s annoying. You have no idea what I have been doing behind the scenes that have led me to make these decisions.

In the world of student organizations, the phrase “no news, is good news” definitely rings true. Hours after sending an email you might still be on pins and needles making sure no one is going to make a fuss over your decision. No one is going to take the time to praise you and commend you if they are satisfied with a decision or an upcoming event. If that decision isn’t what someone wanted though, they will certainly take time away from their homework to make a fuss about it to you.

In looking at these experiences with a glass-half-full though, being a leader in a student organization gives you great skills for working with people in life. You can work as hard as possible to make everyone happy, but that’s not always realistic. People’s immaturity can frustrate you and it may seem to you like the common, decent thing to do of being mature, but even so, there are always going to be people in life who are lacking in the department of maturity.

These tough experiences with budgeting, communication, recruitment and retention of members, interpersonal relationships are all worth it in the end. If you think about it, the stakes at a student organization level are much lower than in the professional world. So, to have experience with all these things while the stakes are still low, will help you out in the long run.

As a final note though, to all students who are a part of student organizations but may not be leaders, some small requests. Read the emails leaders send, yes they may be long, but they are sent for a reason. Meet deadlines, if you meet deadlines then everyone’s lives will be easier.

Be understanding, you have a limited perspective of what’s going on so give your leaders a bit of a break and the benefit of the doubt. Be involved, many hands make light work and that is true in student organizations as well. Leaders can’t do everything and they will be super appreciative of people who want to contribute more time and energy.