Hint: think to yourself, “What would a total square do?”

The Industry

It’s been almost four years since I received my undergraduate degree. In other words, it’s been almost one entire undergraduate degree’s worth of time since I got my undergraduate degree!

Since graduation, I’ve been “in the industry.” I’ve always thought that referring to “industry experience” in software engineer was kind of funny, since “industry” evokes imagery of physical labor – but no, it’s a desk job.

So how did my education prepare me for my first full-time job in Big Tech? It certainly made me a much better programmer, and I had really great experience with faculty from lots of different departments. However, for the interpersonal aspects of my job, one thing prepared me more than anything else: the Secular Humanist Association.

SHA-what?

Secular: lacking religion
Humanist: belief in the goodness of our collective humanity
Association: like-minded people

When I arrived bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to university, I had no idea what I should be filling my free time with. One fine autumn day, I was lured out on to the Kirby Terrace by the promise of free hot dogs (!!). The student association was holding the annual student activity fair. This was good since walking around gave me something to do so I could feasibly get a second hot dog without feeling too guilty about it.

The SHA was formed a year or two prior to my freshman year, and they were tabling that day (that’s cool-kid speak for “sitting at a table passively advertising their club”). Mustering up the courage, I walked up to their table and spoke with the president. What I said escapes me, but I’m sure I was super weird about it. I put my name down on their sign-up sheet and walked away quickly.

They held weekly meetings on weekday evenings. This worked out well for me and my new best friend, as we lived in the dorms and didn’t really do anything. We went to the first meeting together joined by about seven or eight others – we discussed our ‘deconversion’ stories. As a mostly-closeted atheist from a mostly-culturally-religious community, I had really, truly, never felt like I belonged somewhere like I did that night.

Over the four years I was involved1, the weekly meetings were the primary feature of SHA. A small group of vocal nonreligious students would get together and talk for an hour or two. We did other activities too – watched movies, occasional charity drives, advertised in the student commons area – but the most important thing to me was the community. The group was small enough that, when it came time to choose officers for the next year, it wasn’t really much of a contest. Nevertheless, I was happy and excited when I was elected president my senior year.

  1. One of those years I was abroad, but I still count it.

President of Non-Belief

This was my most important college experience. I was hugely excited for the opportunity – I wanted to push the envelope, you know? I wanted to do a graveyard of the gods, debate, host events, raise money for charity – really get people to think. Pissing off authority figures would be an added bonus, although not my primary goal. I would quickly learn that in order to be successful, I would have to realign my expectations a bit.

The first truth of managing a student group is that it’s really hard to get people interested in any student group.

The second truth of managing a student group is that it’s really hard to find time to manage a student group when you’re balancing senior year classes, two part time jobs, and maintaining friendships and a relationship.

Throughout the 2015-16 school year, I scheduled weekly meetings, and I prepared things to talk about or videos to watch. As a registered student group, we were also eligible to apply for funding; if memory serves, we got a whopping $100 per semester. For special occasions, I ordered pizza with this money, but I also felt it was important to have snacks every meeting, so I brought a package of store-brand cookies to every meeting. Sometimes we tabled as well – best thing we did was give away packets of Ramen in celebration of Ramendan. Let me tell you: that turned a few heads! Question everything, sheeple!

The thing that I am most proud of is my weekly newsletter. After the student activity fair, we had a bunch of student email addresses, so I decided to do something with them to make it seem like we were a more-established club than we actually were. And so “SHA Weekly” was born!

Each newsletter contained a short list of news articles that I found or were shared with me, a list of upcoming events, and a list of webcomics or other funny things pertaining to secularism I found. The part that I had the most fun with the intro sentence: honestly, I figured no one was really reading the newsletter, so I made it weird. Here’s what I mean:

President speaking! Fresh from the shores of Tortuga and hot off the Bermuda triangle, it’s not pirates – it’s the Secular Humanists!

President speaking! Like an old, rusty can of beans that talks to you and a summer camp counselor with a can-do attitude, it’s the Secular Humanists!

President here! And there’s no time to come up with an absurdist opening line like a late night comedian who know’s he’s been cancelled but soldiers on because out there, somewhere, he still has hope that he has one fan in the world — because we’re back for spring semester!

One week, I showed up for our weekly meeting, and one of the freshmen came in after me. I think I had been late in sending a newsletter that week, because we were talking about it they said “I love reading the newsletter; your opening lines are so weird!” There it was. My own special brand of absurdism had been noticed and appreciated.

Consistency. Leading SHA taught me that the most important facet of leadership, at least for a small group like this, is consistency. Someone has to drive the bus, or the bus will run off the road and the group will die. Much like the aforementioned bus, this metaphor has really gotten away from me.

Leg-SHA-cy

I’ll leave you with this picture of most of the Spring 2013 SHA group. We’re holding up hockey sticks to spell “CHAMP” – the name of our school mascot – because I registered the group to participate in a school-wide day of service. Why the picture? Because if we submitted it to the school, we were entered in a contest to win a $25 Amazon gift card.

And we won. Was it because we were possibly the only entry in the contest? Maybe.