How Being Involved with Campus Activities Helps College Students with Management

College is a time when you ought to be taking advantage of every opportunity to grow as a person and develop skills that will help you for the rest of your life. Of course, the classes you take will be a big part of that, but that’s not the only way you can enrich yourself at college.

Getting involved with campus activities is an outstanding way to better yourself, not to mention having a great time while meeting friends that may last for the rest of your life. By participating in campus activities, you can cultivate management skills that will prove useful in your career.

Managing Yourself in a College Environment

For many students, college will be the first time living away from your childhood home with your parent or parents. In addition to the challenge of your coursework, you’ll be faced with having to manage your time and energy in a way that you likely haven’t in the past.

While it may seem like participating in college activities could make managing yourself more difficult due to increased commitments, the opposite is true. Campus activities can create extra structure in your day, teaching you how to be disciplined in how you manage your schoolwork, activities, leisure time, and any other commitments you may have.

Participating in campus activities in addition to your schoolwork will give you a better taste of what the “adult world” is probably going to be like for you. This kind of schedule will make you more comfortable and effective when you’ve entered the professional world and are juggling full-time work, family and other after-work commitments.

Campus Activities Can Improve Management Skills

One of the other major benefits of participating in campus activities is how they’ll strengthen your ability to interact with others and develop better management skills. Being able to effectively manage your co-workers is one of the most crucial job skills an employee can have, and if you aim to have a successful career you’ll likely find it necessary to be a good manager.

As a student sticking only to your coursework, you’re mostly just responsible for managing yourself. And while learning how to be self-reliant and effective is important, that’s not training your people management skills.

Campus activities are always highly collaborative affairs. You’ll be working with fellow students, faculty and other university staff, as well as potentially businesses or charities, speakers or performers, and any number of other people.

As a participant in these activities, you’ll find yourself interacting with a wide range of different types of people while trying to achieve varied objectives. In order to be successful, you’ll be developing the types of skills that will also make you an effective manager, including:

How to be an effective problem-solver
How to listen well and ask the kinds of questions that advance your goals
How to collaborate and work within a team environment where you rely on others
How to communicate effectively and persuade others toward your point of view
How to make decisions and see the consequences of those choices

Campus activities are a low-stakes way to experience the kind of environment you’re likely to encounter in your professional life, especially if you move into a management role. As you do, you’ll realize that the job is easier because of the management skills you developed participating in these campus activities.

Ways to Supplement Your Management Skills While in College

Campus activities can go a long way toward developing your management skills. In addition, you have other resources at your disposal as a college student for growing as a manager.

Your college may offer courses either directly about management or about topics related to management. These are often within the business department but may be in other fields as well. A guidance counselor can help you sort through your options to find a class that’s right for you.

You can also seek out outside resources, like management classes offered by management and leadership training firms. Oftentimes, these can be online classes, which allow flexibility in fitting them into your schedule and require no commute.

These types of supplemental approaches, combined with the hands-on experience you’ll gain from participating in campus activities, can give you a leg up on your fellow job-seekers when you enter the professional world. While your focus right now may be more on acquiring knowledge within your chosen field, good management abilities will translate into just about any professional environment you’ll go into. These types of skills will make doing your job easier, lead to better relations with your colleagues, and make you a more attractive candidate for promotion over the years.

Written by Taylor McKnight, Author for Management Training Institute