Not Enough

One thing that I really liked about BM when I first got here was the amount of clubs on campus. The first week of freshman year all of the clubs on campus put on a fair, showing new students what they have to offer. I remember being so overwhelmed with the choices (knitting, crew, greens, democrats, fencing, etc). The options seem limitless coming from a high school which maybe had 5 active clubs on campus. I remember signing up for many and attending some of their first meetings.

The sad thing about reality on a college campus is that most of your free time is not spent in clubs or at the gym, but in the library or your room studying. I should have known, right? After the first weeks of trying to be in three clubs, I had to choose between them. A young, naive freshman, I chose the one which my friends were becoming members of. As a result, I chose a club that, at first, wasn't about something I thought I really cared about. It was interesting, and meaningful, but not something I had previously been interested, and certainly not something I was passionate about.

After the first month or so, my friends stopped going to the meetings with me, but I felt obliged to go. After all, I had been given an appointed position and had a duty to fulfill. As the year went on, I became friends with the older members of the club, and even became interested in what we stood for. The next year I was asked to run for the exec board and I won. I was the new treasurer.

Little did I know that most people, like the few friends I had originally gone to meetings with, become too busy during the semester to be a part of clubs. This is my third year as a member of my club, I am now secretary, and it has become excruciatingly painful. I found something that I was interested in and thought worthwhile and was ready to jump in and start doing some good. But it's not that easy. A club cannot be run by only its exec board, it needs members who are interested and dedicated and actually can come to meetings.

I found out that, as neat as it is for such a small school to have so many diverse clubs, it means that there just aren't enough students to go around. There are few people, in every club that stay committed and come to the meetings and events, but as a whole, the student body is just too small for the amount of clubs and interests on campus. I wish there were something I could do to give people more time and interest, because we really do have amazing things going on around campus...it's just that we are too busy to take full advantage of them.