It’s Good to Find Clubs Uninteresting

What makes a club appealing to you? Every student, including myself, has been told relentlessly to join clubs in high school, but what are you supposed to do if you don’t find any of them interesting? This disinterest is actually the reason why exploring clubs is all the more important.

High school is an extremely developmental time in any teenager’s life, yet there is an overarching pressure with these four years that you need to come out of them knowing exactly what your plans are for higher education and/or your future career. This unrealistic expectation sends students into a stressful spiral of what exactly is the “right choice,” or choosing the “right decision.” There are so many paths to delve into that it can become overwhelming, and even unmotivating to attempt to explore each one.

This overwhelming feeling and lack of knowing where to go or where to start when it comes to career exploration is what high school clubs are meant for. They are not just for students to develop their existing passions or to gain credits for a college application, but clubs are an amazing tool to learn about yourself and see what you find uninteresting.

If you find yourself lost while walking through the sea of students crowding around tables during club day, know that not directly participating in a club can be just as valuable as actually joining one, because you are learning what you don’t like in an extracurricular/career. This process of elimination can help you narrow down your search options career-wise.

Keep in mind that there is a clear difference between not putting effort into participation versus attempting to search for something that you want and coming up with nothing. 

That being said, put more thought into why there wasn’t anything that interested you during club day.

What did you see that you didn’t like? Was it the subject the club focused on? Was it the way the club was involved in the community (too little or too much)? What would make a club appealing to you?

By focusing on these questions instead of constantly searching and searching for something you aren’t sure of yet, you give yourself direction towards not only your interest, but your values as well. 

I also didn’t want to participate in clubs my freshman year, but because I was so disinterested I took that as an initiative to try out new things and hopefully find a spark in something that I did like. I remember joining the Society of Women Engineers and discovering that a club with that intensity, dynamic, and overall nature just wasn’t for me. I learned through what I didn’t want, what I did. 

I gravitated towards the more social, laid-back clubs, eventually starting my own with my friends. Explore your disinterest, get out of your comfort zone, learn about yourself, and use this knowledge to direct you towards what you want out of high school.