Going Above and Beyond in RSOs

Going Above and Beyond in RSOs Illinois is lucky to be home to thousands of talented and intelligent students. Students do not only go to class to get a world-class education, however. They also spend countless hours outside the classroom participating in RSOs. Whats an RSO you ask? Its a registered student organization, and Illinois has over 1,000 of them. You can join fun activities like Squirrel Watching Club to a club volleyball team. RSOs are meant to be a nice outlet for students to let off some steam and learn valuable skills. A lot of students like me join RSOs that are career-oriented. I have been pretty involved with the American Advertising Federation (AAF) at Illinois student chapter. We are the largest student chapter of the AAF national organization with over 450 members! Thats a ton of friends you can make who all have the same passion and drive as you. Many of these RSOs will have general members like you at first when you first join. However, like college life, the more you put in, the more you get out of it. I urge anyone who joins an organization, especially a career-oriented organization like AAF, to pursue any and every leadership position. The skills of managing people and leading an organization to the next level will take you far in life. I have managed and led a public relation agency with over 10 clients like the Illini Hockey team and Alpha Delta Pi sorority, just to give you a few notable names. I inspired and encouraged members to create engaging blog posts and social media content for these clients. This weekend, I am now interviewing over 40 advertising students who applied for executive board positions for the AAF executive board next year. Its inspiring and hopeful to see so many future leaders of an organization, and I know these guys will go far in life because of their drive. The lesson here is when you join an RSO, go above and beyond and become a leader. Who knows, maybe youll be the president of the organization one day. Daniel Class of 2018 I’m an Advertising major in the College of Media. I’m from a northwest suburb of Chicago called Buffalo Grove. I chose Illinois because it was the first university in the entire world to offer an Advertising major, which is pretty cool!