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Posted Nov. 12, 2014

Joining Societies: Not Just for Freshers’ Week

The greatest piece of university advice you’ll ever get? Join a society . Uni life without groups and societies isn’t really uni life at all, and you’re seriously missing out on any number of connections, experiences and skills that are pretty much guaranteed to set you above others in the workplace, especially in competitive areas like media or law. Just because you might have missed out on these experiences on your first time in university, does not mean that these opportunities aren’t available to you now you’re a postgrad.

In fact, postgrad might be the perfect time to join a society. Trust me on this: the undergrads who usually run these things will see a postgrad and automatically see you as wise and experienced in the field, regardless of whether you know anything or not. They’ll see you as a sort of Gandalf figure, except a Gandalf who spent less time doing magic and more time doing uni radio or playing Ultimate Frisbee. Also, if you're doing a masters degree in a chosen area to increase your employment prospects, it really is an oversight not to be involved in the corresponding society. You might have missed the booze and ritual humiliation of the initiations that qualify as fun for naive freshers, but the new year is not too late to make an impact in whatever society you want to join, from theatre to football to FilipinoSoc So how do you go about finding these societies? Well, to quote from every over-eager tour guide on a uni open day, the ones who must have been battery farmed on some tour guide farm where they were gorged on relentless positivity, there really is a society out there for everyone. From course-specific societies to the strangest sports (anyone for spending Saturday afternoons with a stick wedged between their legs with the Quidditch Society?), they’re all waiting for you to sign up, and it’s easier than ever to do so. Most societies will now have a Facebook and Twitter page, and if they don’t it’s probably a sign that the society is not well enough organised to be worth joining in the first place. So just searching the activity you are interested in plus your uni name on social media should bring you to a world of like-minded individuals who share your love of wine tasting, life drawing or film making. And if the society doesn’t already exist, why not create it yourself ?!

If you’re not sure what it is you want to get involved in, your student union website should have a comprehensive list of all the societies on offer, including contact details and whether there are any joining fees involved. Here, you can discover activities you didn’t even know were activities, but that could end up being your chosen career when you finally move into the big bad real world - after all, if people really do intend to make Quidditch a thing (and it seems that they do), then surely the ‘sport’ will need referees. And even if joining a society doesn’t end with you becoming a Quidditch millionaire, hopefully you’ll have spent a year or more doing the things that you really love to do with others you really love doing them with.

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1 comment

Emanuel Oct. 23, 2016, 3:45 a.m.

Thank you for your blog article.Really looking forward to read more. Really Great.

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