A lot of students come to Mercer, sit quietly in class, then go home or to work and never participate in life on campus. This can be isolating and even make it harder to feel motivated.
One way to build interest and connection is to join a club. There are more than 45 of them and according to Gerson Martinez, the Orientation Coordinator at Mercer, 35 are currently active.
Most clubs meet at least once a month and have two events of some kind within a semester. That could be anything from a party on the quad to a fundraiser for Toys for Tots.
In a VOICE survey of 30 students who were hanging out in the Student Center, which is where the club offices are located, 93% said that they have made friends because they joined a club.
Some clubs are academic or career-focused, like the Criminal Justice Club or the Physical Therapy Assistants’ Club, others are social and cultural such as African Students Organization, Carribean Vibes and the Rainbow Coalition, while others are just interest-based like the Gaming and Adventure Clubs.
All the clubs are free to join, and some people even start new clubs based on common interests. Once they find a faculty adviser and fill out some paperwork they can qualify to get a budget to use for events according to Martinez.
In a study titled “The Impact of Extracurricular Activity on Student Academic Performance,” researchers Jing Wang and Jonathan Shiveley found that students who graduated high school with a 3.0 GPA and joined a club in their first semester at college saw stability in their academic performance. By contrast, students who finished high school with the same GPA but who did not join a club ended up with an average GPA drop from 3.0 to 2.2.
That data is supported by students here at Mercer. In the same VOICE survey, 70 percent of students who joined a club said they saw their GPA go up after doing so. So if not to end the lonely monotony, joining a club is academically a smart move.
