The student clubs

So clubs are a big part of the business school experience, right? Yes they are. There are a thousand clubs out there and much to the dismay of students, they are all doing things at the same time. :-) Well not really, I am kidding; they do coordinate stuff and ensure that they are not stepping on each other's toes. But then, much to the dismay of students, they are doing stuff back to back!! You see what I mean? When do I study? :-) Let me give you an example. There was this one day during this week (remember that its only one week since I started studying; I have to keep reminding myself that there are so many more similar weeks to go when one week itself seems like eons with so many things to do) when we had 3 back-to-back club-kick-off meetings. The clubs were Marketing Club, General Management Club and the Leadership Development Initiative. All very active and high-profile clubs in Fuqua with an overwhelming response. We actually ran out of pizzas that had been organized for the last two of the meetings. I spent less time in the school that day with anything remotely to do with studies and more in these club meetings.

While that might be a good excuse for a back bencher like me to not study, but it does really present ton-loads of opportunity for students. Every club has like a 1000 positions each. There is director of promotion and marketing the club, the social chair responsible for liaising with the social clubs etc. etc.; I can't even remember all of them. The best part of it all however, is that they are all completely student-run. I haven't sat in any club meeting where a member of the Fuqua staff or faculty was present. There are times that I look at the second year students suspiciously (you know, looking out of the corner of my eye kinda thing) and saying to myself, "Is this kid really doing all the stuff he is claiming to be doing for the club? He is the co-chair of the club, so I believe him, but come on, isn't he just a student here?" Well anyway, as it is said, bschool is a relatively 'risk-free' environment to try out your stuff without running the risk of getting fired (wait a minute, you are already jobless, so it can't get any better, can it?). So if any of you come to Fuqua next year and find me sitting at the throne of the co-president of the GMC or the chief editor of the Fuqua Times, don't worry; I might falter a bit, might suddenly go underground for couple of months, miss couple of editions of Fuqua Times once in a while, or what the heck, maybe even mix up the schedules of Bill Gates and Jack Welch when they arrive to talk as part of the Distinguished Speaker Series at Fuqua! I am sure we can all have a good laugh and learn from it! ;-) OK, before I am rejected for the position I recently applied for at Fuqua Times, lemme say that I am kidding. :-) The programmes here are really quite well-arranged by the students.

Well yeah, going back to the point of number of activities, its really amazing how many clubs keep doing something or the other and how you suddenly want to do stuff that you never even thought of in your wildest dreams! Its like watching an info-mercial (the long 'informative' commercials that you find yourself watching late-night on TV, usually with a line "Buy this product coz. its really good!" or some nice old woman pretending to be your grand-mom walking up close to the TV screen and saying in a particularly nice and old-fashioned way "I have used this product and found it to be extremely useful. I highly recommend it!"). Jerry Seinfeld once said "I have found myself sitting late at night in front of TV at 1 AM and thinking to myself 'I really don't have a knife that can cut through a shoe! I think I should place a call to 1-866-THEE-KNIFE today and cut up all my shoes'".

In a bschool, you see so many options in front of you, its like your dream-come-true. Have you realized that most of the stuff we thought we would do in life when we were kids are some of the stuff that we are the farthest away from today? Strange, but that's how it works man! So maybe its too late to become an astronaut, but the again, you could write an article on space ships for the next Fuqua Times, maybe its too late to become the President of the United States, but then again, you can surely invite the President and have a tete-a-tete with him (or her, some day hopefully soon) while others eye you enviously, maybe you can never become a singer now, but then again, you can produce the work of some upcoming artist! As you can tell, I am not much of a philosopher, but I think you get the point! :-)

So clubs are the killer! Your classes are not a drain on your time and if you are lucky enough to have a great ILE team like mine, you can spend all the time you want in student clubs. But remember this; there just ain't time enough!