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This week, Harvard hosted its annual Student Organization Fair. Every year, students begin their extracurricular lives at this event and every year, pre-professional clubs take center stage.

What’s the problem? Isn’t Harvard supposed to prepare us for thriving, influential careers? Certainly, but these clubs obscure crucial aspects of college life. They can take precedence over classes, ruin our sleep schedules, and pit us against each other, leaving little room for genuine connection with our classmates. The solution: Perhaps counterintuitively, another club — not one which prepares students to join the workforce, but which gives us a space to laugh and unwind.

In other words, we should join more fun clubs.

Now, you might be thinking, “where can I find time for yet another club?” There’s a simple answer: Drop a career-focused, time-consuming, insanely stressful club. After all, you might be facing even more of a time crunch with the College’s new emphasis on centering academics. Another great thing about fun clubs is that their time commitments are minimal!

Career clubs have cultivated a culture of zero-sum, resume-driven thinking. Bonding with our fellow classmates is found squeezing in a thirty-minute meal in a dining hall between classes, crashing out over problem sets, or working until the early hours of the morning on a newsletter for a club. Fun and relaxation are too frequently viewed as wasteful, rather than natural and necessary. And we’re suffering because of it.

We all know about burnout at Harvard. Admittedly, the topic can feel trite, but it is a real problem. Some observers have characterized the modern Harvard student body as “more worried and uptight,” than previous generations. As of 2023, 34.5 percent of the Class of 2027 had received mental health services, up 22 percentage points from the Class of 2017, according to The Crimson’s Freshman survey. I’d wager that this change is not due to newfound academic stress, but to a trend of valuing extracurriculars over academics.

Those misplaced priorities are also impacting our social lives, with concerning consequences.

The importance of social connection cannot be understated. Social isolation has been shown to increase the risk of premature death by 29 percent. Having strong interpersonal relationships is linked with better sleep quality and management of stress, depression, and anxiety. In other words, a recreational club has a real chance of making you more productive in your professional pursuits.

But unlike career clubs, the core goal of fun clubs is not productivity. An integral part of the college experience is forging meaningful relationships with our peers. Joining a career-oriented club has its benefits, but joining a club without professional ties creates community — one where you’re not competing for the same leadership position or internship or job. And who knows, you might even discover a brand new passion.

The recent club fair reminded me of my own experience there one year prior. As I was corralled from booth to booth, constantly bumping into my fellow freshmen, club members shouted at me to “Join Harvard Model Congress to travel the world for free!” and “Comp CBE to make a difference!” and “Apply to the IOP for a career in politics!” I had no idea what any of the acronyms meant.

At the fair, I also learned of clubs I never would have thought existed: a whistling club, a board games club, a beekeeping club. And after two hours of constant yelling and flyers bombarding my face, I discovered something incredible — a carefree side of Harvard.

Not knowing any better, I didn’t join any of those groups. I got sucked into the tunnel vision of pre-professional organizations. So, freshmen, don’t be like me. Join the running club or the film club or the knitting circle or the poker club or the scuba club. And, non-freshmen, if you fell into the same trap that I did, let’s follow the freshmen and join a club, just for fun.

For the most part, Harvard students don’t have to worry about finding professional success — so let’s make more of an effort to enjoy ourselves while we do.

Claire V. Miller ’28, a Crimson Editorial Editor, lives in Mather House. She’s also an aspiring member of the Mather House Intramural Volleyball B Team.