The Oakland Post

Be involved or be ignored

By editors
Posted: Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010 at 9:40 pm | Last Updated: Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010 at 9:40 pm Comments Print This Email This Tweet This Delicious

“Get involved!” You’ve undoubtedly heard this plea before, probably many different times from many different people. Yet each and every time, you find a way to ignore their advice.

“I don’t have time,” you say. “I’m really busy.”

With what? Class, homework and part-time jobs are common responses. But here are some dirty little secrets professors and your current employers aren’t likely to share with you: In the real world, grade point average means very little, if anything, and your ability to work a cash register won’t come in handy when you apply for a nursing position at a hospital.

That’s not to say you should stop going to class and doing your homework. Nor does it mean you should quit your side job — working to put yourself through school is very admirable and no easy task. But we urge students to weigh what will be most beneficial to them in the long run.

Perhaps you think: “What does OU have to offer? A few student orgs and a couple club sports? We don’t even have a football team.”

OU has 182 campus organizations. While what they can offer ranges greatly, there are enough to choose from for each student to find at least one that fits his or her interests.

Several Oakland Post staffers, for instance, just returned from the 2010 National College Media Convention in Louisville, Ky., where the newspaper was honored as a Pacemaker finalist for general excellence and won a Best in Show award for its website.

But even more importantly, those who went attended informational sessions led by advisers from student newspapers across the country.

If you don’t want to take our word for it, here’s a sample of what other student organizations are doing:

– The OU chapter of the American Marketing Association has weekly guest speakers

– Students of all cultures can find an opportunity to socialize in any of OU’s multicultural clubs. The Middle Eastern Festival and  European Night, for example, feature a myriad of cultural showcases  from various countries to students free of charge.

– Students in Free Enterprise competes in annual competitions, which allow members to network with like-minded students across the globe

– OU’s Model United Nations team won first place at the Lake Erie International MUN competition this past week.

All of these accomplishments mean much more than a line on a résumé, but shouldn’t you want at least that?

Campus organizations shouldn’t have to resort to giving out free food at events, but they do — and even that isn’t motivation enough.

Finally, the most common reason students come up with for not getting involved is that OU is a commuter school. We’re far from representative of the entire school, but of our 20-plus staffers, only two live on campus and we make it work.

Future employers aren’t going to ask how many miles round-trip you drove to school each day. What they will ask is: What groups and organizations were you involved in and what did you take away from them?