The Sunday Eight O'Clock/The Joiner
A DEAR old lady whom I once knew used to say in evidence of the fact that she had not wasted her eighty years, that she had never belonged to a club or been a member of a committee.
Hers was, perhaps, an extreme view to take, and one not likely to be accepted by the impulsive undergraduate. There is no doubt much to be said in favor of belonging to something. To do so may widen one's acquaintance and develop his initiative and increase his responsibility and his power of leadership, but whether it does or not very few fellows who are asked to join anything can find it in their hearts to refuse. It is a sort of flattery which we all fall for.
At this season of the year, however, when clubs are multiplying and lists of prospective members are being prepared, and the nets are being laid to ensnare the unsophisticated, it is possibly not unwise to sound a soft note of warning. The man who asks you to join something is like a promoter or an insurance solicitor or a book agent. He presents the invitation so skillfully that it seems like a rare privilege that one can not afford to slight, or the opportunity of a life time which one should not neglect. The prospect is alluring, but the cost is sometimes great.
One may belong to too many things. I know a number of undergraduates who belong to so many that they have time for nothing else. The joiner often has no time for his studies and no money to pay his regular bills. All his substance is wasted on his organizations, and all he has to show is a few flunks, some unpaid bills, and a collection of curiously designed pins.
Don't join anything that you haven't time to help, and don't join anything that can not be of some real service to you. A good many of our undergraduate organizations are groping about with the hope that they may ultimately find some real purpose for existing besides contributing to the support of fraternity jewelers and getting their photographs in the class annual. I am repeatedly besought to suggest some real object in life for a dozen different organizations which have not yet stumbled upon anything worth doing. Joining becomes with many fellows a fad and an obsession. It overshadows every other ambition and desire. It may be good to join something, but it is imbecility to join everything.
September