How to get Involved on Campus during the Spring Semester

In the age of virtual learning, it can be so tempting to do nothing but roll out of bed, log onto a monotonous Zoom lecture, and scroll through Instagram for 50 minutes. With so few in-person classes, there is scarce a reason to leave your dorm room! Since most of the college experience has devolved into glorified independent study, the social aspect of an on-campus experience has changed right alongside it!  

Come February during a typical Spring Semester, campus classrooms would be packed 24 hours a day, seven days a week--classes and labs taking place during the mornings and afternoons, and extracurricular clubs, organizations, or societies going long into the night! This semester, things are just a bit different! Most campus activities are occurring via Zoom. Clubs still meet on a consistent basis, but they’re just meeting virtually! The social aspect still exists through massive group chats either on iMessage, GroupMe, or even Discord. Now we have an opportunity to meet new people and make new friends, but these methods are still having us locked away in our dorm rooms...how can we change that while finding a safe way to get involved on campus? The answer may seem too simple to be true.

I cannot begin to list how many times I’ve just been walking around campus and run into everything from a random student organization giving out free donuts and coffee to a full-fledged symphony orchestra performing on an outdoor stage in the middle of a field! When we’re inside our 5’ x 10’ rooms, it’s sometimes easy to forget that these collegiate metropolises that we call home are sometimes hosting tens of thousands of people every single day! With that many people in such a small geographical setting, random events are bound to pop up everywhere! Simply going for a nice stroll around campus will lead you to stumble upon the greatest surprises that any college campus could wish to offer! (Plus, walking outside for just a quick breath of fresh air is one of the best things you could do for yourself especially if you’ve been working on nothing but homework for hours on end!)

My most recent random adventure occurred when I was strolling around campus with a friend. We turned a corner and saw a massive stage set up with enormous lights shooting up into the sky! Naturally, we went to check it out. The Campus Activities Board had set up a socially-distant “Comedy Knight” right in the heart of campus! They placed me and my friend in our own little individual “pod” so that we were nearly 15 feet away from the nearest person, yet there were easily a couple hundred people in attendance! We had a great time and had no fear whatsoever of feeling unsafe! I think it’s safe to say that a quick lap around campus is certainly the easiest way to get involved on campus!

So the next time you’re tempted to do nothing but roll out of bed and scroll through Instagram for 50 minutes, call up a friend and go explore your beautiful college campus! You’ll be surprised to find what’s waiting for you beyond your dorm room’s four walls!