It’s a jungle out there! During each entry in the Safari Guide we take you on a journey into the fascinating and gritty world of college students in their natural habitat. Don’t wear your good shoes. This week’s animal can frequently be found charging across campus between meetings, hanging flyers to promote events, and complaining about a total lack of free time… Meet the Extracurricular Hound.
Background
The Extracurricular Hounds are the few, the proud, the over-involved. Collectively, these activity-lovers make up a shadow student government that controls nearly every aspect of campus life. Whether they are recruiting new members outside the Memorial Union (referred to as “tabling”), flooding Facebook in-boxes with invitation after invitation for the latest free event, or making announcements before class starts to pitch their Yogurtini charity night, Extracurricular Hounds are everywhere. They often begin life as average students who simply want to “get a little more involved” and “meet some cool people.” However, they are quickly drawn in by the sensuous and tempting lifestyle of free meeting pizza, customized t-shirts and resume-padding executive board titles. Soon, the metamorphosis is complete, and the Extracurricular Hound is collecting signatures from potential freshman members and writing up meeting minutes.
Appearance
The Extracurricular Hound is almost exclusively seen wearing organization-centric garb. This is to be expected, as these clueless creatures spend nearly 85 percent of their lives either going to, coming from or in club meetings. Different varieties of Extracurricular Hound will don different attire. For example, “Programming and Activities Board” Hounds wear shirts advertising their upcoming events and concerts (and sometimes past ones, for nostalgic purposes). Some Hounds clothe themselves in matching organization polos, an act that many hypothesize to be a feeble attempt to differentiate themselves from their t-shirt wearing brethren. Apart from clothing, the Extracurricular Hound is easily identified by a sleepless and stressed appearance (often accentuated by a venti Starbucks cup). Duties like compiling and publishing bi-monthly newsletters for a 30-person organization are heavy burdens to bear, and can take a physical and emotional toll on the Hound.
Demeanor
Moods of the Extracurricular Hound are punctuated by their dizzying, free energy drink sample-fueled highs and irritable, over-stressed lows. The Hound’s personal outlook and behavior usually depend on his or her current level of involvement in organization projects and events. The Extracurricular Hound is outgoing and friendly by nature, but these positive traits are often paired with extreme competitiveness and hyperactivity in this species. Due to their high level of loyalty and commitment (when something is in it for them), Hounds make good friends and practical choices for relationships. However, their busy schedule and constant need for (student) engagement leaves them somewhat unavailable, in both the temporal and emotional senses.
Calls of the Wild
“Guys, college has to be the best four years of lives. It just HAS to be.”
“Have you seen my blue highlighter? I need to color-code my planner by order of personal devotion to and investment in each activity.”
“I literally haven’t eaten today. Literally. So busy.”
“Come to our meeting! Free food!”
“I’m the Event Planning Committee Catering Subcommittee Co-Chairperson!”
“Ugh, wouldn’t it be so much easier if you could just compile all your listserv e-mails into one daily digest”
“I got three hours of sleep last night.”
“I’m on campus more now than when I lived here freshman year.”
“But it’ll look so good on my resume!”
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
I think you guys left an edit at the very end
I keep fixing that and it keeps popping up again! Grr. Thanks for the heads up, Celeste!
You will get a free t-shirt!
Genius.
I laughed out loud in the middle of a lecture in my 13 person econ class…awkward
Suggestion for call of the wild: “Time for a tough week: 14 meetings, 3 interviews, 4 socials, oh and some school stuff”
haha Greg…I think we both know a few people who fit this description…very well done, once again
I have an idea kids: let’s do several “really cool” things in a super mediocre way, and then talk ‘em up on our resume like we were saving the world! Our future employers will NEVER know!
This is exactly what I needed in the morning.
“The best part of waking up…is Greg’s Campus Safari in your cup.”
Watching Hound meltdowns may be one of my favorite pastimes.
“If I don’t have this poster done, no one will come to the event. Then no one will know about how much (insert health issue here)/(insert kids camp you’ve never heard of here)/(insert community service project here) is doing for the world! Then I won’t get it on my resume. Then I won’t get hired to the job I want. Then a chipmunk army will invade because I wasn’t there to stop them. Then all humans will be forced to work as slave labor in nut harvesting camps! DO YOU WANT TO HARVEST ACORNS ALL YOUR LIFE! Didn’t think so…so I have to do this poster.”
Superb piece. Appears like it may be semi-auto-biographical as it sure has an insider’s point of view. The closet full of gold t-shirts and maroon polos is a dead giveaway.
The previous Campus Safari guides were also great….how do I find them?
You can find the rest of the Campus Safari Guides in the “Blogs” section at the top of the screen. Or you can click on Greg Fitzgerald’s name in the byline and see all of the articles and posts he has written.
thanks, marcus! i’m glad you liked it. and yes… it was definitely “inspired” by some real-world experiences. sounds like you can relate.