AMS Clubs & Speakeasy

Last year, I spent a lot of money joining 9 clubs and then dropping all of them by the end of the first term for one reason or another.

This year, to better save my money, I’ve been signing up for mailing lists with the intention of paying only for those clubs I end up going to regularly. (Though I’ve found out that Youth Outreach doesn’t require membership fees at all, which I think is cool.)

Such as the Thai club. While I have not yet paid my membership fee for that, I trust my Thai friend will chase me up on it.

Hearing that I joined the Thai club, I also got recruited by a Taiwanese club and the Vietnamese club, neither of which I have any heritage with whatsoever or have paid my fees for either. But the promise of food is very enticing.

(The Thai club is offering a one-off 10% per table discount at an authentic Thai restaurant, so take advantage of it!)

So far I have successfully managed to avoid joining any Chinese clubs, though I foresee myself giving in to peer pressure and joining for the sake of an umbrella, two folders and a possible discount on a ski trip. While there seem to be many times more exec positions than regular membership positions, I’m not interested in going after one, even if it would be good on my resumé. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll regret this attitude.

I’ll tell you what I have done, though.

For the last couple of months, I’ve been thinking and working on my application for AMS Speakeasy, the peer counselling service. I had my interview yesterday and got the position today. Training is this weekend all weekend, and while I’m as tired as ever, I’m really happy and relieved to join the team. I’ve been wanting to get involved with this for a long while now.

I did a lot of soul-searching last term and discovered a number of things that have me targeting a lot more specifically now. Namely, I don’t know enough about anything to know what I want to be doing with my life; my experiences thus far are mostly confined to entertaining young children. My aim this year is to get a variety of new and different experiences — not just any random experience, but in things I care about.

What do I care about?

I care about English lit. I care about creative writing. I care about being able to help another person face-to-face.

So I’m working with that for now. The academics side takes care of itself, thanks to school. I mean to see what can be done about the writing/editing/publishing side of things with the English Students’ Society, which is the only one I know thus far that has any kind of English literary publication. And now I’m volunteering with Speakeasy.

I also joined a dance class at the REC, I’m applying for co-op, and a few other things I’m sure to talk about as well as time goes on. But the point is, I hope I’m doing okay even if I am not a club exec of any sort.

I’m open to trying completely new things in the hopes of stumbling across something I would never imagine adoring if I hadn’t given it a go.

Guess that’s where the Thai and Taiwanese clubs come in, eh?

2 responses to “AMS Clubs & Speakeasy