For many students, university seems like a roadblock that prohibits you from getting started in your career. While asking a lot of my friends what their opinions were about university, they unanimously agreed that “they just wanted to get it over with” and to be honest, I felt the same way as my friends.
Last year was the first year I joined clubs at SFU. As a second year student majoring in communications, I joined Enactus but I wasn’t completely convinced on the idea of joining a club because I didn’t want to commitment my time to it. My friend who was involved with the program urged me to try it it out because she thought it would be beneficial for my resume. As tedious as it was, driving to Surrey every single Wednesday for a whole semester and working with high school students, teaching them videography skills, the active participation made me appreciate my degree so much more.
In the past, I felt like my program wouldn’t get me anywhere. In the position that I am in now, I would say about 40% of my learning came from going to my classes and 60% came from actually putting myself out there and learning from a mentor at a club. And I think many communications students can agree, our program can feel vague and sometimes I don’t know what it can even lead me to but joining clubs made me realize how in reality our program is actually versatile. Now I’m a writer for HerCampus and a marketing coordinator for SFUSMA and being involved with these organizations made me really appreciate how flexible I’ve become with my skills. If anything, being proactive with involvement forced me to learn more applicable skills and network with individuals who I may have never met if I didn’t join a club. Here are some things I learned with my two years of involvement with clubs at SFU.
1. Hard Work Pays Off
A lot of clubs require you to be self-directed and self-motivated and to be blunt, there’s no substitution for hard work. Regardless if you get the results you want, hard work can be transformed into soft skills that will definitely help you in the future. Whether that be problem solving, conflict resolution or time management, these skills will definitely never be outdated.
2. You’ll learn something regardless if you like the people
Sometimes you don’t get to work with people you get along with but you shouldn’t let that take away from your experience. Whether that be conflict resolution from always butting heads with the people you’re working with, patience or other soft skills that can be learned through being in a situation that makes you uncomfortable.
3. You Will Not Survive Without Time Management
I don’t think I’ve ever heard one of my friends say that they are great at time management. With balancing friends, work, studying, doing readings and waiting in line for coffee at Renaissance and Starbucks, there isn’t a whole lot of extra time to do what you want. What I’ve learned from being part of clubs is that I thrive under certain environments (basically I can only be productive after 10PM) and that understanding and prioritizing my tasks is an effective way to manage my time better. Even though time management is a skill that only gets better with experience, it’s important to understand what you’re good at and then starting from there.