I am a commuter, and that has often led me to feel left out of the general college experience, but when I joined a club that all changed. I have been a member of the Northern Michigan University Dungeons and Dragons club, Dungeons and Wildcats, for the past three years, and my only regret is that I can’t be in it longer.

I found myself, and still find myself, detached from campus life — the dorms and their special houses, the campus events that are hard to attend or even going out with friends. I can’t imagine any college is strictly geared to commuters, and that makes sense, but it can often feel isolating. I will give props to NMU for making a commuter lounge, but that’s a small consolation to being left out. However, finding a club that fit my interests and attending their set events made me feel apart of campus.

Because of the club, I was able to meet so many people with shared interests, and more often than not they had extremely different backgrounds. This kind of diversifying and connection is at the core of going to college—it is the kind of social development that no book can replace, and I managed to get it by rolling dice to see if my Knight could slay a goblin.

Eventually over the years, I moved up in the ranks of the club, becoming an officer and then the president, where I sit now. This kind of role really has put a deep sense of responsibility on my shoulders. With this role, I am the one all the club members depend on to give them a space to play, to make friends and to escape the stress of college, and I can’t let them down. That, along with working with the other officers to get fun events going, raising money and holding club members accountable has built some real, tangible leadership skills—skills I would not have gotten otherwise.

All of this and so much more define the benefits of being in a college club. I couldn’t imagine my NMU experience any other way.

Editor’s Note: The North Wind is committed to offering a free and open public forum of ideas, publishing a wide range of viewpoints to accurately represent the NMU student body. This is a staff column, written by an employee of the North Wind. As such, it expresses the personal opinions of the individual writer, and does not necessarily reflect the position of the North Wind Editorial Board.