Can You Become Too Involved In College?

Whether you plan to start college soon or are already several semesters in, you’ve heard it from everyone, no doubt: get involved! Parents, professors, and peers will all be encouraging you to join some sort of club or activity. Since there are more than you can probably even keep track of, it shouldn’t be too difficult to find some that pique your interest. Whether they’re academic-related or just plain fun or goofy, there’s a club or organization for every interest.

Yet, especially when you’re just acclimating to college, is there such a thing as getting too involved? There is. If you join five or six different clubs right in your first several weeks of college, you may wind up like an overloaded computer that just shuts down. Trying to juggle classes on top of all those clubs and organizations will be more than any one person can handle. What will happen is, in attempt to do everything and be everywhere at once, you may still get things done, but not done well.

College life itself is the ultimate instructor of time management. No matter how good you are at it, it’s important to keep in mind that we’re all working with the same number of hours of daylight. Time is a finite resource, and so is your ability to manage it. Instead of running from club meeting to club meeting and class to class, focus on just a few clubs in which you’re particularly interested. Since you probably can’t or shouldn’t cut how many classes you take (especially so early in your college career), you’ll have no choice but to learn to love a couple clubs just a little less!

If you insist on attending five different organizations, at least don’t take on leadership positions in all of them. It’s great to be ambitious and to want to have new responsibilities, but you also won’t be doing the organization a favor if you can’t dedicate adequate time to it. In fact, you may be setting yourself up for conflict! No one wants to be the one accused of not doing his or her share of the work. Then again, if you have a full schedule of classes and a variety of other clubs to oversee, you might have to shirk some responsibilities no matter your work ethic.

Don’t forget the main reason you’re in college: to take classes and to learn. Believe it or not, it’s actually quite easy to place classes in the backseat while placing club duties at the forefront. Oftentimes your club duties will be, well, more interesting and fun than studying and reading textbooks. But here’s where responsibility comes back into play. You have to be responsible for your grades as well, and even if you’re the superstar in your favorite club, letting grades slip just shows that you’re not as great at managing time as thought. College work will keep you plenty busy, but there is still enough time to get involved … to a point. What that point is will be different for everyone, so use those grades as your barometer. You can and should still get involved, but, although you’ll hear it a million times from parents, professors, and more, don’t forget about those grades!