Brandeis University is an institution that thrives on academia. Our premed program is robust, our business school is vibrant, and our humanities department is always questioning and exploring the status quo. The faculty and professors we have here at Brandeis fill us with a breadth of knowledge we simply couldn’t find anywhere else. Yet, as curious and intellectually stimulated adolescence, there is more to learn than just classroom simulation. That is why extracurricular activities are of such importance.
Extracurricular activities supplement our classroom learning with real world, applicable knowledge. They give students the opportunity to expand their horizons, and the focus of their major or minor and diver into entirely new topics. Below are a few examples of what you can learn from clubs on campus.
- Being involved with a publication on campus teaches you how to synthesize the writing skills you’ve learned in school with your personal flair. You are given the opportunity to brainstorm fun and exciting article topics while making sure you track the interests of your peers to understand what they would want to read about. You are encouraged to follow the latest media trends, and learn how to informally interview professors, campus leaders, and campus celebrities.
- Being a member of Student Events has taught me an incredible amount on the topic of event planning, public relations, concert preparation, and teamwork. We are given the opportunity to work with vendors directly, to throw large scale events and to work with a budget well beyond our modest college budget. We learn to gauge the interests of our peers for the events that we create and we see our hours of work come to life as events are put on for the entire student body.
- As a Student Caller for Brandeis Phonathon, you primarily learn the first steps of sales. How to cold call people, how to make small talk, and how to keep someone on the line when they want to leave. I, almost immediately, learned the do’s and don’ts of phone edict and how to respond politely to being yelled at. In retrospect this position gave me a great understanding of how to conduct myself with people who are older than me and how to create a relationship entirely over the phone.
- Being a research assistant for a professor has is also an incredible way to learn about topics you aren’t given the opportunity to dive into in class. Working with a professor established a great mentorship relationship that was able to flourish much more so than in a course setting. I was able to learn how and why professors conduct research the way they do, and the nuances that are involved in the topic of their study. Doing research with a professor gives you a breadth of knowledge that you wouldn’t have access to otherwise and a lesson in analyzing and decoding data. Extracurricular activities can give students hands on knowledge and real word experience. Classes provide a wealth of knowledge for our mind, but extracurricular provide the true experience of doing.