Staying Involved in Your College

Just like staying involved in your high school, staying connected with your college—both while you're there and after you graduate—is both rewarding and important. And while the two have several things in common, there are different ways in which you can maintain your level of involvement in your college campus. Because of the great differences in how high schools and colleges are run, you'll have to go about the process a little differently.

One of the more immediately obvious differences is the way in which you'll find out about opportunities for involvement. Because universities are so much larger than high schools, there's almost sure to be a volunteer coordinator or another similar person working there. A good way to go about finding this person is to contact your college's office of alumni affairs or alumni council (both of which you should be able to find on the school's website fairly easily). Someone in this group will be able to direct you to who you need to talk to.

After you talk to the correct university representative, you'll probably start noticing another significant difference between high school and college in this respect: in college, it's much more organized. In high school, it's often pretty informal, and you can just walk in and start helping out somewhere. At the post-secondary level, you'll probably be placed in a very specific place to do a more specific task. You'll still have the choice of what you want to do, of course, but it's likely that the options will be tailored to the needs of the school. It's also fairly likely that you'll be working in a group; groups of alumni often gather to do some sort of service project for their college.

Alumni organizations are also good ways to get involved. Many alumni groups organize regular volunteer sessions at their college, and you can hook up with them by contacting your alumni office and asking about organizations that stay involved with the school. It's often easier to do it this way, because you might know a few of the people that you're working with, and at the very least, you have something significant in common. A lot of these groups use Facebook or another online social networking tool to stay in touch, and this makes it really easy to find out about events that you can take part in.

However you get in contact with your school or an alumni group, it's good to get out there and give back to your school. You'll be working for a good cause, get to meet other alumni from your college, and have fun. So, whether you've graduated already or not, find out about doing some volunteer work around your campus. You'll be glad you did.