What I learned from opening my first club

In the previous post, I have shared to you all about the steps that you can take in order to establish a club as well as running it smoothly (hopefully). In this post, I would like to share with you guys about my experience in opening a club, as well as the lessons that I have learned from opening my first club.

As you have already guessed, the club that I am talking about here is my school psychology club, which has been established by me and a friend who isn’t in the club anymore. My school’s psychology club actually has been created a year earlier by my old school counselor (Ms. Virginia), and I also participated then, but she left, so basically at the beginning of 9th grade there wasn’t such a club. The idea of a psychology club sparked in me again some time in early 2023, and then I reached out to a peer of mine who was also in the club in 8th grade - she found the idea very interesting! That’s when we reached out to our school’s new counselor, and she was very enthusiastic about that plan too - and that was the way from just a small idea, DGS Psychology Club was made.

In the first meeting, me and my peer actually didn’t realize that so many people were interested in participating in this club - we were initially aiming for around 10, but at the end nearly 20 people came. I know, for some of you right now, 20 doesn’t seem like a lot. But our school then had fewer than 200 students, and plus we didn’t do any advertising (well, I did post the registration form on Instagram), so that was a huge achievement.

By then, i was actually pretty scared, but then since my peer and the counselor (Ms. Lilly) were there, we started the club on a pretty positive note. I remembered vividly that in that first meeting, we made students sit in a circle, and played West Wind Blows - psychology edition. Then, I was very proud of the club.

In the next few meetings, some of the people dropped, but a lot of people were very interested in participating in the clubs, so we did quite a lot of activities. By then, since my club wasn’t very “impactful” yet, most of the things we did were within the club itself: we did presentations about stress, we meditated, we did other things. The turning point of the club came from one week, when it was very close to midterm exams. Then, we decided that we would let people go free for a meeting, but since we didn’t really have a group chat then (we did have one but just a few people were in it), a mistake of mine and my friend’s came from the fact that we just disappeared from the room that was intended to be the room for club meetings. And a week later, the number of people who came dropped to less than 5! I know it was our fault for not informing people earlier and sitting in the room in case people came, but well, that was our mistake.

Whereas it was very sad and disappointing that only around 4 people stayed in the club, me and my peer were very pleased by the fact that for the people who were left, they were actually very active and enthusiastic in the club. And I just can’t leave them, right? That was when I learned one thing that I still keep in my mind nowadays: don’t be let down by the fact that something doesn’t meet your expectation, but be happy for what you have. My club may only have a few people (it was my fault I know), but the ones left were the actual passionate ones, who despite us skipping a meeting still decided to join the club meetings.

Fast forward to 10th grade, I have of course decided to continue opening my club. The school counselor has left (she was going to America for marriage, I believe), and my peer who has started the club with me has also left, so that was pretty disappointing. But still, I decided to register the club at the school. In the club fair, I was assigned a room pretty far away from other clubs, but some people did come, so that was pretty cool.

Later, I learned that 4 people have signed up to join my club (later on, one dropped) - it is fine, no worries, no worries (I assured myself). The new counselor, Ms. Glynn was very open, and she let us use the actual counseling room to host the meetings. Of the four people who stayed with the club last year, 2 people continued to participate in the club this year, so I was pretty happy about that. Again, lesson learned: be grateful with what you have, don’t just compare your club to others, and definitely please don’t have the mindset of “oh my god, that club has more members than mine”.

From the beginning of the year until now, we have done quite a lot of achievements, despite the fact that not many people joined the club. Firstly, we did hold a meeting with a psychologist - I have had to negotiate with that psychologist for quite long before we were able to meet with one another on Zoom. We actually did record the conversation, but then there was no sound, so yeah. We also have created posters, and so far, it was very fun!