With classes, homework, and athletics filling students’ schedules, clubs and activities are often pushed to the side. However, dozens of students somehow manage to run clubs in addition to handling their heavy workload.

Senior Emmett O’Malley, PAC President, says, “managing time is definitely the hardest part.” Planning and holding events or meetings can be difficult to schedule between classes, athletics, and other activities.

Planning also requires a significant amount of time from the leaders of the club. “A forty-five minute event can take six hours to plan,” O’Malley says.

Emily Yeager ‘17, co-president of the Community Service Club, has experienced this as well. “I’ve found that it takes twice as much time on behalf of the leaders,” Yeager says.

Finding the time to devote to their clubs and accomplish their goals is a struggle for club leaders. Community Service co-presidents, Yeager and Emily Grussing ’15 began setting up events before school had begun in anticipation for their heavy workload. “We started arranging stuff over the summer because we knew that once the year started we would be going crazy,” Yeager explains.

Now that clubs are well underway, co-president of both LiNK and the Community Service Club, Grussing, explains her method for finding time. “When an issue arises or when I think of an idea, I try to act on it as immediately as possible…If you delay, it can get stuck behind the other piles of things that you have to do,” she says.

Similarly, co-president of both OWLI and Sustainable Life Hannah King ‘15 says, “I set my own weekly deadlines. This week I know what’s due each and every day.”

Despite struggles with workload and time constraints, the club leaders had no doubt that their effort was worthwhile.

“Every time I can educate someone else about an issue or get them passionate about something is a win in my book,” Yeager says.

King displays her excitement at the interest and participation in the clubs she runs with co-head junior Alex Fay, saying, “the amount of joy you feel when you realize that other people have similar passions as you is truly amazing.”

When asked the most necessary quality in leading a club, club leaders answered commonly: passion.

“It’s easy enough to just do the bare minimum,” Grussing says. “But if you actually want to effect change and accomplish your goals you have to have passion.”

O’Malley says, “I don’t think there is a specific type of person that makes a club successful, as long as you really like something, I think you can run a club.”

“If you have the passion, if you have the will, the drive to work then you can absolutely run a club,” Yeager says. She continues, “If you are careless about it you aren’t going to get anything done.”

While the work and time required by clubs can be taxing and overwhelming, the passion and benefits students receive from getting involved on campus seems to outweigh the difficulties. The spirit of passion prevails in the lives of more than thirty students who devote themselves to making clubs at Williston numerous and successful.