…join five clubs and attend none of the meetings.
JOIN FIVE CLUBS AND ATTEND NONE OF THE MEETINGS. Follow for more unfiltered takes on the unique journey through university life and beyond.
Remember that orientation week frenzy? The quad packed with tables, free pizza, and a dizzying array of clubs. You signed up for five. Or seven. Or ten. Not always out of burning passion, but because it felt like the thing to do. The unspoken competition to appear "well-rounded" was palpable. Everyone was building their resume, networking, signaling ambition. You wanted to keep up. Perhaps you genuinely thought you’d master time, excelling at Mock Trial, Investment Club, a literary magazine, and still ace organic chemistry.
Then came the emails. The calendar invites. The crushing reality of deadlines, job applications, and the desperate search for sleep. Meeting invites became unopened messages. Initial enthusiasm morphed into quiet resignation. You rarely, if ever, showed up. Yet, on your resume, they remained, a testament to... what, exactly? A commitment you couldn't keep? A dream deferred? Or perhaps just a perfectly executed piece of "prestige behavior" we all recognized and silently understood.
It’s a peculiar rite of passage, this performance of overcommitment. For current students, it's a knowing wink: Are you truly engaged, or just collecting bullet points? For alumni, it’s a shared laugh over coffee, a nostalgic nod to the absurd pressures. We’ve all been there, chasing the phantom of perfection.