It often happens where a student starts a club without actually caring about the topic that their club is about or what their club actually accomplishes.  At large high schools, this leads to a myriad of clubs who don’t actually do anything, clubs in which the people who attend are simply trying to receive a club leadership position in their junior or senior year.  This ultimately is not constructive to learning or academic advancement.  I decided to start a club this year, and while starting the club I learned that there was so many more benefits than just demonstrating leadership.

The first benefit is that it actually does teach you to lead, it doesn’t just demonstrate it.  I am by nature a more quiet person who prefers to keep to myself rather than lead others.  I always knew that in order to accomplish the goals that I want to in life I would need to learn to become an expert leader.  Starting a club is the best way to learn leadership as a teen.  I found that influencing people and organizing them to try and get them to join my club was extremely difficult and uncomfortable for me at first.  I felt awkward asking people to join and promoting my club.  I think that this is probably a normal thing when you are doing something you have never done before.  Eventually though, I found myself feeling comfortable being the leader and organizer of people.  This is something that is imperative to success in the modern world.

Another thing that is beneficial to starting a club beyond just demonstrating leadership is actually learning significantly more about the given topic than you would have otherwise. I started a philosophy club, and before I started it I already knew a decent amount about philosophy. I had read multiple books on philosophy and I had spent significant time thinking about the ideas that I learned, but actually starting a club put pressure on me to really know what I was talking about. While I already knew about philosophy starting a club made me learn so much more than I would have otherwise.