The meaning and continuity of student organizations, as I see it

What mattered most was no longer just getting events done, but deciding what we wanted to leave behind

At the beginning of my second semester as president, I spoke very directly to the club about our theme: internal development. To me, this was not a slogan. It came from a realization that by that point, the most important thing for the SWUFE HSBC Young Club was no longer simply whether we could produce another event, but what exactly we wanted people to take away from being here.

During my second semester as president, we pushed forward two major project groups. One was for the fifteenth anniversary party, and the other for a series of internal development talks. The first mattered because an anniversary is never just a celebration. It is a way of turning memory into continuity, of connecting our cohort to the many cohorts before us. The second mattered even more to me, because it reflected the kind of value I wanted the club to create.

We did not want to invite institutions to prescribe one correct path. We wanted alumni and older students who had already gone through these choices to come back and talk honestly about planning, internships, competitions, and how their thinking evolved. I have always felt that the early college years are not about getting a final answer immediately. They are about building judgment early enough that you stop moving blindly.

The essence of a club is not excitement, but structure, rhythm, and reliable people

The SWUFE HSBC Young Club has never been an organization with abundant resources or manpower. Much of the work has to be built and carried by students themselves. Precisely because of this, I came to believe that what actually sustains a club is never the noise of a single successful event. It is whether there is a clear main structure, a steady pace, and a small number of people who can truly hold the work when it becomes difficult.

Looking back at internal notes reinforced this for me. The relationship between department heads and members is not fundamentally hierarchical. It is closer to experienced members guiding newer ones. The same is true across departments: meetings become more effective when there is a pre-meeting, when agendas are clear beforehand, when each task has a first owner, and when everyone knows what matters most that week.

I also came to value the principle that completion matters more than perfection. Not because standards do not matter, but because student organizations never operate under ideal conditions. You have to make things move first, and improve them while they are moving. The people who keep that process alive are rarely the flashiest ones. They are the reliable ones.

Becoming president made me think more about the boundaries of authority

Earlier on, I instinctively saw “president” as a position with more authority. Over time, that idea became less important to me. What I cared about more was what authority should be used for in the first place. In a club, I think authority has only one valid reason to exist: to serve everyone better, not to make the person holding it feel good.

I also came to believe that what a president protects is not personal preference, but the club's shared rules and values. That is why I kept returning to two principles. First: if you choose to trust someone, you have to actually give them room to work. Second: freedom still needs boundaries. Delegation is not the same as disappearing. At key moments, someone still has to hold the direction, contain conflicts, and stop management friction from spreading downward.

This is also why I became more serious about talking to members about staying on. Staying is not only about gaining a title. It is about getting the chance to lead a team, coordinate work, make judgments, and take responsibility for a whole piece of something. A club's future depends on whether it continues to bring people into that role.

So for me, the SWUFE HSBC Young Club was never just a line on a resume

If someone asked me now what a good student organization really leaves behind, I would not start with how many events it hosted, how many resources it had, or how lively it looked from the outside. I would say it should help people see the world a little earlier, begin planning themselves a little earlier, and become more willing to bring other people forward as well.

That is why, for me, the SWUFE HSBC Young Club was never just “a club experience.” It was a training ground for organization, responsibility, rhythm, and continuity. It was the first place where I seriously understood that the essence of a student organization is not identity, not activity for its own sake, and not noise, but whether people actually change because they were there.