It’s that time of the year again! College is back in session and campus life is bustling. You might have seen posters promoting the Student Org fair or a variety of clubs. When contemplating your after-class activities, think about these 3 lessons from TV and movies.
Community
Student activities can sometimes seem hookie, but it’s better to just get into the spirit of it and have fun
Colleges are filled with activities that you’ll be hard-pressed to find after you graduate. If you approach school with laser-sharp focus academically alone, you might be missing out on a ton of great experiences along the way.
Jeff Winger from the TV comedy Community approaches community college with a “get in get out” mentality. He got disbarred as a lawyer from his firm when his degree got found out to be a fake. Winger is just eager to return back to his rich high-powered attorney status by getting a real degree with minimal effort and involvement.
After a failed attempt to hook up with Spanish 101 classmate, Britta, when she brings classmates to his fake study group, Jeff finds friendship and adventure with this ragtag group of students that include an injured high school football star, a recovered Adderall-addict A + student, a mother of two going back to school, an autistic inspiring director, a retiree looking for mental enrichment, and a feminist rebel without a cause looking to restart her life.
Community’s study group does it all from debate team competitions to Dungeons and Dragons to paintball battle royales. The group forms such a connection with each other and the school, that they find it hard to leave.
So, before rolling your eyes at a poster for a lifesize game of battleship, don’t pretend it wouldn’t be fun to try to sink other peoples’ canoes with buckets of water in the rec pool, and hey, you never know what kinds of people you may meet along the way.
Accepted
Trying out different student clubs and activities is a chance for self-discovery
Most students approach college with a heavyweight of external expectations placed on them from family, friends, and high school. Sometimes, students choose their path with little self-reflection or general knowledge about all the career paths that are available to them.
For example, I’ve already graduated but I’m always discovering cool careers I’ve never heard of or considered.
The outlandish comedy Accepted is all about students not knowing what to do with themselves after high school and just trying everything out.
The movie focuses on Bartleby Gaines, a guy who doesn’t get accepted to any colleges, so as a last-ditch effort to not disappoint his parents, he just makes one up. When his forgery of a school website and location goes a little too well, hundreds of other recent high school grads in his same predicament show up ready to spend their college funds
When Bartleby interviews the new students asking them what they want to learn, he finds out most students don’t know what they want to learn and have only followed the paths that people expected of them.
After these students get over the initial shock and hesitation of thinking for themselves for the first time, they write down their answers on a giant dry-erase board in the atrium and that becomes the school’s curriculum.
These undergrads explore and self-teach skateboarding, taxes, rock-and-roll, culinary arts, fashion, meditation, bumper sticker design, pick-up artistry, health insurance, and blowing stuff up with their minds.
The main takeaway from Accepted is, make the time for self-discovery. College courses are thousands of dollars and student organizations typically cost less than $50 to join. Interested in dipping your toes into Hip Hop dancing? How about learning photography? Maybe you want to learn what coding is about before majoring in computer science?
Student clubs are low-cost, risk-free, safe environments to see what a subject is all about. Maybe a student club gives you a passion for a life-long hobby or maybe it even inspires you to change your major. At its worst, you’ve discovered something you don’t like and you walk away from it with new insight about yourself.
House Bunny
Bring Your Unique Skill Set to a Club
Sometimes, the student clubs that need you the most are the ones where the members don’t share your particular expertise.
A great example of this is Shelly from the House Bunny. Shelly is a former Playboy Playmate who was forced to retire. She happened to stumble upon the down-on-their-luck sorority, Zeta Alpha Zeta, who are a bit socially awkward and dowdy and on the brink of having their sorority shut down unless they find new pledges to join.
While initially, the Zeta members feel unsure of Shelly’s overly girly and bubbly persona, they change their minds when they see how popular she is on campus.
Shelly doesn’t have “book smarts”, but she does know about fashion, makeup, decorum, marketing, and how to invoke confidence in a group of young women who could use some.
While Shelly never originally sought out becoming a house mother for a sorority, she finds it to be a really fulfilling role.
It’s common to see students who want to practice their craft, try to get elected for a student club related to their major. This can be a mistake because there is more competition for these roles than for clubs where your skills are more unique.
As another example, let’s say you’re in graphic design and you want to practice designing a website. Instead of running for the webmaster position of the graphic design club, think outside the box and find another club on campus you’re interested in and ask them if they need a new website.
You might be pleasantly surprised by how excited or grateful these student groups can be to have you and your talents around.
Join the conversation:
Have you seen these 2000s-era shows? If so, let me know what you thought about them and if this article has given you any new perspectives on enjoying campus life!
