This past week I sat down with my Honors mentor, Olivia Spiegel ‘25, to talk about her on-campus involvement. Olivia is double majoring in Communication & Media Studies and English Literature with a concentration in literature, culture and media as well as minoring in Creative Writing. In addition to being an Honors student and an Honors mentor, Olivia is also the current Vice President of the theatre club, Setter Stage, and will be serving as the organization’s social media director next year, the provisional member director for the sorority Phi Mu, a member of the Greek Honor society Order of Omega, and will be working as a peer leader for UNV101 starting in the fall. We talked about how to manage being involved in so many different things, what on-campus involvement means to her and why she would encourage everyone to join campus organizations.

Autumn: Why is being involved on campus important to you?

Olivia: I really like being involved on campus because not only is it a great way to meet other people and network, but I feel like I definitely have a purpose. I get to plan all of these events and have so many things going on that I know I’m very dedicated to. I’m very proud of myself and everybody I get to work with.

Autumn: What’s your favorite thing about being so involved? 

Olivia: All of the people I’ve gotten to meet. Especially being in a sorority and even Setter Stage as well, I can walk around anywhere— the caf, the library, the lounge— and I see somebody I know. I go to the courtyard and there’s probably a bunch of people I know. There’s always someone around, I’ll find people I can have lunch with just because they happen to be in the same place as me and I know them through all of my clubs. 

Autumn: You mentioned the sorority you’re a part of, any common misconceptions you want to dispel around Greek life?

Olivia: Absolutely! I highly recommend Greek life. I love being in my sorority, it’s so fun. I promise we’re not all scary Alabama white girls, it’s actually very diverse. It’s so much different here as opposed to southern schools. We don’t live together. It’s very different from what you see in tv shows and movies, it’s more of a social club with leadership opportunities and networking. We just had an alumni panel where we had women who graduated talk about job opportunities they’ve had and their experience. So, yeah, I definitely recommend it, it’s a lot of fun, we have formal events where you get to dress up, like I said before, there’s lots of networking opportunities and it’s career-oriented.

Autumn: What’s your least favorite thing about being so involved?

Olivia: Probably that I’m really busy. My friends are like ‘Do you have any time today that we can hang out?’ and I’ll just send a screenshot of my packed Google calendar as my way of saying, ‘This is what I’ve got going on, if we can plan around that’. I’m busy a lot of the time but I like it. I like getting to bounce around to a lot of different places, it’s nice. Saying I have a meeting to go to makes me sound so professional, so does making plans for an event. But yeah, I’m busy a lot, which is, I think, the only downside. 

Autumn: There must be times when it’s difficult to handle everything and you feel overwhelmed. How do you cope with that?

Olivia: I always make sure to set aside time to get all of my academics out of the way first because that is definitely very important to me. On top of being in clubs, I’m also in the Honors college, so I want to make sure that I’m meeting their GPA standards and everything like that. I like making sure that I have a set time in my day to sit down and get everything done for the week. While they’re very important to me, all my clubs, academics are definitely my number one priority, so I make sure that those are handled before I get everything else done.

Autumn: How do you balance all of your extracurricular activities and being an Honors student and maintaining your GPA?

Olivia: It’s really just making sure that I’m prioritizing my academics and being very organized. I’m a calendar girl, I love my calendars. I always make sure my calendar is up to date so I know when everything is going to be so I know when I have time for things and when I don’t. It keeps me from pushing things off and procrastinating because I know, like, for example, ‘Friday I have three events going on, make sure I get my homework done before then’. I think being organized is definitely key.

Autumn: Do you feel like being involved helps you get your work done because there isn’t any space to procrastinate? 

Olivia: I think so, yeah. Sometimes I get so busy I forget about an assignment, but, you know, I try not to and it doesn’t happen very often. Sometimes I’ll have to push an assignment towards the end of the day because there’s so much going on, but I make sure everything gets done. 

Autumn: What lessons have you learned from being so involved in so many things?

Olivia: I feel like I’ve learned how to be a leader. I’ve had a lot of leadership opportunities. I really enjoy that, it’s like I get to be a point of contact for people or a role-model so I’ve definitely learned like… I’ve been more mature lately. I feel like when I got to college I wasn’t that mature, but I feel like I’ve definitely grown a lot in these positions and it’s helped me to become my best self.

Autumn: What would you say to incoming students who might want to get involved in multiple campus organizations but they feel like it could be too overwhelming or that they’ll fall behind on their academics or are just intimidated because they don’t know very many people? 

Olivia: I would a thousand and ten percent recommend people to get involved, especially since part of your tuition goes towards student activity fees. I always recommend people to get involved in any sort of way. You don’t even have to be in a leadership position, you can just be a member of an organization and you’re still getting your money’s worth. And I think just being a member of clubs isn’t super time consuming, everything is very…it’s very easy to balance because you can be as devoted or not devoted to the organization as you need to be based around your own schedule. So, I would definitely recommend people to join and you can always schedule things around yourself. Join clubs and organizations, whatever is interesting to you. I just really recommend getting involved in any sort of way, whatever you’re comfortable with.