University life is full of new experiences, acquaintances, and activities. Even if this is not your first year, still, you’ll find yourself excited about what is about to happen next. After leaving home to live in a foreign country, it’s a bit normal to seek a sense of belonging. What better way to achieve this other than joining a student club? Studies have shown that effective involvement in student clubs and organizations is of huge psychological benefit for both first-year and senior college students. 

What are student societies and clubs? 

An organization of students who share a common interest or background formed in university or college, they usually have a faculty member to supervise them, although students manage and organize it independently. Clubs could be academic, political, artistic, cultural, or religious and spiritual. Some students interested in the same sport establish a club of their own, as well as students who are interested in community service and volunteering work. Students embracing the same belief or having the same credo usually organize their student society to support their notions and ideas freely. 

So let’s take a look at the pros and cons of joining student societies and clubs.

Pros: 

1. Develop Soft Skills

Humans are social beings and developing our soft and interpersonal skills is a necessity during college. Student societies and clubs give you the chance to regularly interact with other students and other people. You get to learn more about resolving conflicts, problem-solving, critical thinking, and even standing up for yourself.  Although you might be able to develop all these skills if you have a job while studying, but student societies have the benefit of being more fun since you’ll be joining a club with students who mostly have the same interest as you are. 

2. Better Career Perspective

To know what you exactly want, you need to try a lot of things and decide that you don’t want them. One of the most important decisions to make as a college student is choosing your career path, and this doesn’t happen overnight. Joining student clubs, participating in new activities, doing some volunteering work will give you a deep insight into what you dislike. Knowing a lot of dislikes will limit the things you like, so voila! Even if you already know what you want to pursue in the future, companies are more likely to choose students who had been in a student group and done some volunteering work because of their high interpersonal and leadership skill sets.

3. Expanding Your Network

One of the greatest benefits of joining a student society is getting to know new people regularly. Not only expanding your network develops your soft skills, but it will also help you in when you’re looking for new opportunities, a job, a recommendation, favor, or anything along those lines. The people in your network since you were a student are more likely to help you in your career path. Also, they might be able to offer you invaluable career advice since you might be joining a student club with seniors who had started their careers already.

Cons:

1. Time Management

More likely than not, you’ll need to participate in weekly and monthly meetings, and contribute to any available projects. Aligning these things with your lectures and studying schedule might be tiresome, but doable. Get yourself ready to sacrificing some entertaining outings, or personal time to keep up with both studying and your student society/club. Your involvement will become stronger, but sometimes the lack of time might force you to compromises. This responsibility comes with placing your extracurricular duties above your college education. Since managing time is that critical, go and read our Time Management Tips & Tricks blog post to learn more.

2. Risking A Wrong Choice

Fresh students are usually eager to start learning about teamwork, cooperation, and achievements outside the university, and student clubs are their door.  Despite that, some student organizations lose their way in the middle, and they have no idea where their society/club is aiming to achieve or establish. Our golden tip for you is that before joining any student society, make sure that they have a clear vision of what their club is aiming to achieve. But don’t worry; you can still rejoin new ones if you feel like it, or establish one of your own with other like-minded students. 

So, are student clubs important? The answer is YES! Student clubs are important for your mental and professional growth during your college career.