SMU touts its spectacular student life and exciting student clubs experience, but does it play a role in the grand scheme of our life?
As every new year rolls around, we write down new goals for the year on a paper we lose beyond the first week.
We want to be more spontaneous and brave and pick up new skills, but often we have no action plan. If you resonate with this and want to work towards potentially achieving some of your goals, your solution might just lay with one (or a few) of the clubs available in SMU.
Clubs in university serve a variety of functions and offer numerous benefits to each and every student that participates in them!
So here are some things that are worth considering should you find yourself torn between joining an extracurricular activity and not.
The Résumé Boost
Let’s start with the most common reason people join clubs in university – boosting portfolios.
Academic clubs offer an opportunity to pick up skills that are perfectly tailored to the industry that you might want to work in in the future. This is a great platform to build soft skills like teamwork, collaboration and problem solving which are some of the most essential traits that every organisation seeks.
Additionally, depending on which of these clubs you sign up for, the skill sets adopted can be hyper specific – data modelling, writing reports, learning how to navigate the stock market etc. – which serve to prepare you adequately for your future in this industry and set you apart from your peers.
Being a member of these unique and targeted circles can be your way of showing employers your commitment to the industry, your drive to learn, and make you an overall good fit for the company.
With SMU’s co-curricular transcript, you will have written documentation of all your accomplishments to share during coffee chats and interviews. In today’s competitive job market, anything that can help you stand out among the crowd of applicants is welcome. And taking up membership in a variety of clubs can make one all the more unique in terms of abilities acquired.
The goal is to be one in a million, not one of a million.
Connecting on Campus
On the other hand, say you are not specifically looking to hone the tricks of the trade, clubs in SMU also tend to open plenty of doors for its members, which might be something you are interested in. At the tertiary level, opportunities to meet and connect with industry professionals, companies, and even your role models are easily accessible.
One thing that all of these clubs have in common are strong alumni networks which make such interactions possible. From setting up alumni networking nights to reaching out to those spearheading growth in their fields, clubs offer support in many ways.
Not only that, with the wide array of clubs, ‘open doors’ is not limited to purely internship or mentorship opportunities. In fact every student has plenty of opportunities to try new things beyond academics!
For example, with SMU Exploration Crew students get to try extreme sports like diving and find community among those who enjoy outdoor activities like trekking and adventure.
Or, one could choose to try out DJing through Stereometa or salsa through Caderas Latinas.
And the best part is that this is barely a fraction of all the different activities students can choose from. The best way to live without any regrets is to take advantage of everything the university has to offer and make the most of it when you can!
Nurturing you Inner-Leader
Apart from enabling one to try out new things, co-curricular activities are an amazing way to strive for self-actualisation.
With internal Executive Committees and governing bodies for these 150 over clubs, students have the privilege of running for leadership positions to step out of their comfort zone and serve their community.
It teaches responsibility and can inculcate one with unique abilities that are required to successfully fulfil these roles.
Alternatively, clubs like Literati allow members to compete in writing challenges for prizes which promotes healthy competition and encourages participants to strive to do better each time. Or maybe SMU’s Ambassadorial Corps which drives one to master public speaking and communication.
The skills you may want to pick up for your own development are entirely up to you. You get to choose how you want to grow and which community will help you get there and at SMU you are spoilt for choice. (And in the case that what you’re looking for does not exist, why not build it yourself with the resources that the school has to offer?)
SMU's Unique Student-Club Experience!
While the next factor comes later on my list, it isn't any less important to consider. SMU is small enough that we do not need a ‘hall’. As a result, that takes away a significant university experience that other local colleges like NUS and NTU have.
Hall life has always created a system where residents have built-in friends. Proximity encourages close bonds that SMU cannot enforce.
Nonetheless, the active and vibrant co-curricular activities offered by the university is the perfect platform where all of us can cultivate the close-knit friendships that we seek. Clubs are one of the best ways to find ‘your people’; the friends that might become your biggest takeaways or #WhySMUs with time to come.
Student Life in Other Campus Activities
Although I have focused heavily on SMU’s Clubs when discussing extracurricular activities, I would hate to neglect other commitments that can also provide all of the above mentioned benefits.
Community Service Projects, organising university wide events like Patrons’ Day and Freshmen Orientation or participating in Sports Fiesta are a fragment of some of the many things students can involve themselves in.
These are just as successful in nourishing one’s academic experience and social life. Every opportunity is a unique way of enriching one’s college experience and it would be wise to remember that before dismissing any opportunity that comes knocking.
The most wonderful part is: most of these opportunities are not life-long commitments. If you try something and you never want to do it again, you simply do not have to.
Pick something new when the new semester kicks off! Do it again and again and again until you find something you love (and if you don’t, at least now you know more about yourself and have a million more interesting stories to tell).
Concluding Thoughts
When choosing to participate in these activities, I would caution everyone to pick wisely and never do something because you feel as if you “have” to.
With all the merits of participating in these activities, don’t forget that at the end of the day, you know yourself best. Sometimes, what’s best is to not overcommit and stretch yourself thin.
Instead, learn at your own pace and get to know yourself better in your own comfort.
Down the line, whether you realise it or not, what you will want to remember is not all the hours you spent stressing over assignments and finals but the extraordinary people and life-changing experiences that took you by surprise.
So do it for your future self, so you will have something to look back on fondly!
Comments