Navigating chaos

There are points in one’s Duke career when it is easy to feel lost, and this time of year is definitely one of them. Freshmen barely have just learned what it means to be a college student, and many are now in the throes of rush. Sophomores are choosing their majors. Many juniors have just come back from abroad. Seniors are trying to decide what to do with their lives.

To help lessen the burden of these stressful experiences, Duke needs to put more thought into developing central resources that can clearly lay out the landscape of opportunities at Duke. For example, students often have the desire to take on a leadership role in campus organizations. The students that fill these positions likely have substantial experience within the group, and thus the leadership opportunities favor individuals that have been intentional about their involvements since day one. But what happens if you didn’t make the perfect connection at the East Campus Activities Fair or you decide that you want to prioritize your curricular engagements?

Getting involved at Duke after first semester freshmen year can be intimidating. Duke has hundreds of student-run organizations, and it is difficult to know where to begin. The Duke Groups website, which intends to be a comprehensive database of groups and events, is out-of-date in its interface and often its content. As a result students hardly ever use it.

Duke Launch is a new program that is run by the University Center for Activities and Events. In one function, they employ Duke students to become informed on the landscape of student activities and to advise their peers on how to meet their extracurricular interests. Another resource is Global Advising. This office helps students to integrate experiences like study abroad or DukeEngage into their academic experience.

These new programs are steps in the right direction, but they must keep a few things in mind in order to be successful in the long run. First, they must continue to market their resources and how to access them. It is one thing to recognize a brand; it is harder to educate students on how to take advantage of it. Second, they must avoid advice that identifies a formula with which to approach Duke. Navigating chaos in undergraduate life is an important experience that can involve significant personal growth along the way. For that reason, everyone’s Duke experience is, and should be, unique. Third, each organization must closely monitor the dynamic Duke environment. Regarding Duke Launch, this is not the first time that an umbrella organization has tried to use students as advisers about involvement other campus organizations. In the end, this task was too much for students to handle. For Duke Launch, the “Launch Agents” benefit from administrative support. Nonetheless, constantly keeping tabs on the hundreds of student groups that can change from year to year is no small task.

As Duke students, we are lucky to have so many choices—they are a blessing and a curse. In this case, deliberate centralization of information has the potential to enrich many students’ undergraduate experiences.