Being involved in fewer clubs is often better than being involved in every club possible. You can be involved in one club, and show qualities such as leadership, commitment and depth. This is almost impossible if you’re involved in every club given, and only being a part of a few allows you to go deeper into the one or two you are a part of and give your all to it. Especially for college, they enjoy seeing you be involved in many things, but if you have significant effort put into just a couple, it can be much more important.
If you spend all of your time across many different clubs, it can come with pros and cons. You can experience burnout because you are spending all your time across everything and you can’t handle it all at once, but you can also have a lot of enjoyment in the beginning. Ultimately, spending your time on five different clubs with school and your social life, for example, doesn’t leave much time for yourself, and ends up becoming stressful.
Another thing to consider is being involved in clubs you truly prioritize and enjoy. It’s essential to not only be involved in clubs that you think colleges will want to see, but also because your friend is in it. While this may be part of the motivation, it’s crucial to also join it if you actually want to. While, of course, you may need to try first, usually by a friend telling you to or because of college applications, deciding to commit is when you need to make sure it’s true to you.
Next, if you choose a few clubs, you could join leadership roles, giving increased commitment and depth to those clubs. You can also grow personal relationships with people who enjoy the same things as you. Becoming a president or being able to go to everything in a couple of clubs is more significant than showing up rarely, or not participating in some clubs, but just being able to say you’re a part of the other clubs. This can be a reason that people join many clubs: either they think they will participate in them all or want to, or, most likely, it sounds fun. But, as with advanced classes, it will only be enjoyable if you actually can juggle both.
With that being said, if you are able to handle 10 clubs, for example, then there’s no saying you can’t, but less is more, especially in this case. If your question is: “Should I be in any club at this point?” my answer is, yes. Especially if you are on the younger end in high school, yes, it sounds good to colleges, but it is also a valuable experience that you will always remember and gives a great experience to learn new things and spend time with people.
To conclude, being involved in fewer clubs is the way to go, unless you believe you can fully commit and participate in more than one, which can be difficult. In the end, it is a personal preference, choice and what you think you will be able to do.
