Each year, colleges and universities expect more and more from students in regards to extracurricular involvement. When it comes to the top 20 schools in America, OHS students have to engage themselves in many more ways compared to the average high schooler 30 years ago. With such high stakes, it is a battle among students for extracurricular involvement and leadership roles. It is becoming less about passion and more about dream colleges, especially since slots for notable clubs are limited.
At OHS, the number of clubs is steadily increasing, but there is also another form of academic involvement that students have begun to engage in: social media passion projects.
“Most of the people who start those [Instagram accounts] are not even actually doing anything for their community,” said Sanjana Nair, sophomore.
Although these projects simply seem like a way for students to be performative and get ahead in college applications, most students creating these projects come from a genuine desire to educate the student population.
“My motivation behind it is just to learn more, to understand, and help everybody else understand,” said Mihaela Ursu, junior.
Additionally, there are complex ideas that students wish to teach their peers, including those related to business and finance.
“We thought, ‘let’s make a fun environment and let’s make a high-energy environment where we can get real opportunities and have a club that’s almost like an outlet for students to get those opportunities,” said Charles McCue, junior and vice president of OC Business and Finance.
Some students believe that the clubs being created are repetitive. However, there is a separate purpose that students would like to convey from these new clubs.
“FBLA didn’t actually teach. It just said, if you want to learn or if you want an award, go learn it yourself and then get your award,” McCue said.
The themes of clubs are not only limited to business, but also include popular subjects like psychology. Additionally, there are many clubs emerging that are teaching students about psychology, but they are all different.
“It’s a psychology-based research club. We allow students to pick their own research topic that they may be interested in. Then, we connect that to psychology and how it may influence human behavior…,” said Yatharth Tomar, junior and president of Mindworks and Research.
Although some of these clubs may seem similar on the surface, they all have different motivations, and they will uniquely benefit each student when it comes to their college journey.
“It’s important to do research and psychology is important. [College] was definitely one of my motivations,” Tomar said.
