Just last week, I made the comment that I don’t feel as though I had ever been an officer for Pre-Law Society. This was not the first time the question had occurred to me. Even as an officer of PLS, I felt detached from the society and always wondered why. I watched as Annie and Wendy and everyone else would always be so excited about PLS events and hanging out together, and although I made an effort to go to them and do my part, for some reason that enthusiasm never caught on to me. Perhaps to some people, this wouldn’t be abnormal; it was just mean that I cared less about it or wasn’t as into it as they were. However, for me this was weird. I am a very involved person. I am passionate, I work hard, I want to take initiative and I want to excel and go above and beyond whatever responsibilities and expectations people might prescribe to me. However, for some reason or another, this was not the case with Pre-Law Society, which is also probably why I am not an officer again this year.
These thoughts occurred to me with my recent involvement this year with the Undergraduate Business Society. Given the size of it and the scope of the events that we put on, I would have thought that my involvement with UBS would turn out to be the same as it was with PLS. However, I have become ridiculously proud of, involved with, and attached to UBS over these past weeks, and I’m trying to figure out why. The feelings of energy, satisfaction, and contentment with being involved, being a somebody in the organization, helping out are things I not once experienced with PLS, no matter how hard I tried. My feelings for UBS are comparable to my feelings for VITA, except that I am not changing things from the top, if this means something to whoever is reading this. In other words, I talk to another Board Member and I am happy. I go to an event that is not even mine and I feel happy. I work on some stuff and I feel satisfied. I see a threat and I feel passionate and defensive. I feel like I am actually part of UBS, in a way that I never really felt like I was part of PLS.
I’ve come up with a few theories as to the explanation for these differences. One is just my interest in business vs. law, but this doesn’t quite make much sense, since I believe I am about equally interested in both, although mainly interested in BUSINESS law, not just general law. But maybe to specify this theory further, perhaps it is due to my background and previous engagements and experiences and major that I feel that I am better able to connect with the other members of UBS and really feel like we’re speaking the same language. This is quite plausible.
My second theory is my level of experience in business vs. law. With business, I really feel like I know my stuff. I know what I’m talking about when I’m giving advice to students about how to get into consulting, and how the recruiting process works. I know what I’ve done, I know what worked, and I have a full-time offer to back everything up. With law, I never really had any of those experiences. The extent of my law knowledge is that I took a business law class, I interned at a law firm, and I had various other legal experiences and backgrounds. However I have never actually applied to law school. I have never taken the LSATs (although I definitely have studied for it). I would not feel confident in shoveling out advice to other students having never actually been through the process myself. This is quite possible too.
My third theory is a little less pc. I feel like it might have to do with respect. Not for the organization as a whole, although perhaps that plays a part as well. UBS to me has always been kind of this large, super professional, super successful student organization. I “joined” as a freshman when I found their signboard on Bruinwalk, watched Peter network his way up and get into investment banking, heard stories about how successful the officers have been in terms of placement, witnessed how successful officers had been in terms of placement, and just overall have always thought really highly of UBS. For Pre-Law Society, I can’t really say this. I actually attended the first meeting, week 1 of my freshman year. However to me, PLS never really instilled in me that same level of awe that UBS did. I guess I never really did hear much about the placement of law schools or success of the officers. All I knew was that it was pretty much the main Pre-law organization on campus and that had to count for something. However, even when speaking with the officers, I was never instilled with the same sense of inferiority, for lack of better term, with PLS that I did with UBS. When talking with UBS members, they really did just live up to what I expected, and I think this solidified this. I believe this was my main reason that I had previously thought I had for not re-applying for PLS board member, but now I understand that it’s probably an (e), all of the above.
My fourth theory is I think debunked already in my mind, but I’ll include it anyway. I had the brief inkling that it could be because of the praise I have received for my work. For Pre-Law Society, I was praised for carrying around two boxes of membership certificates to every meeting and using a template to copy and paste names and print out certificates for people. To be fair, I was praised for a bit more than that, like running a compare documents analysis on two Excel documents, but my involvement didn’t really extend much further than that. While it was nice that I was praised tremendously, I honestly didn’t really feel like that was worth much praise at all. However with UBS, I was praised for getting 50% of our firms to attend our annual Consulting Night. It was not done in an overly thankful, you’re amazing kind of way. Maybe this has to do with the fact that I’m on a committee with all guys, but somehow the casual, “Alyssa beat us all out this summer!” felt a lot more satisfying to me. I guess this theory isn’t debunked.
It’s interesting though, if you think about it. Creating that sense of community and attachment amongst officers of a student organization is an art form. Perhaps it depends on the person, and their personal tastes. I think that had a lot to do with these differences I’ve discussed. And to be fair, I’ve seen many UBS officers as well who didn’t give a shit about their position or involvement in UBS, other than what it gave them on their resumes to firms, so this probably goes both ways. I can’t tell exactly what did me in for UBS. I don’t know if it was the way people shouted “Consulting!” every time they saw 2 or more of us together, the accepting way my committee members talked to me, the fact that Peter is in UBS and pretty involved as well, or the scale of our events and impact across campus. It’s probably an all of the above.
Words cannot describe (so ironic).
Actually, it’s kind of strange. Back when I was big on DBSK, whenever people saw my posters, they would always say, “Let me guess. You like him *point to Yoochun*.” Except I didn’t. I guess he looked like my type, and admittedly, when I first saw DBSK, I chose Yoochun to like, just based off of looks, but eventually because of personality I came to like Yunho, and liking Yoochun the best no longer made much sense.