Home to over 800 student organizations, Iowa State has a place for you to spread those wings like the social butterfly you are.

When you come to Iowa State, you’re going to be thrusted into new situations. One of those situations is finding a new social grouping.

You could buddy up with your roommates until you graduate, but for the students who want to find some like-minded individuals in the mass of 30,000+ people on campus, joining a student organization can allow you to express yourself and make some friends.

During orientation and the mandatory one credit college specific orientation courses, something about joining a student organization will pop up, typically near the semesterly ClubFest, where student organizations make their pitch for you to at least check them out at one of their meetings. This semester’s ClubFest will be September 8.

The common advice is to join an academic club that pertains to your major and something of personal interest. While this a good starting point, the level of niche-ness you can find, and the sheer number of available clubs can be intimidating. Luckily, there’s no limit to how many you can join.

Check out the Equestrian Club for a week, join a political organization’s student chapter for a bit or become a member of the Rugby club to get some aggression out. The limit to what’s out there is your willingness to try them out.

Student organizations vary from mission to mission. Some act in a way to support you academically or professionally, some are athletic based, centered around activism, performing or philanthropy. The types go on and on but one thing all student organizations offer is being some type of social group.

Worst case scenario, the thing you are truly passionate about isn’t a club yet and has been waiting for you to pioneer your way to creating it.

For those in this case, there is a process to create a student organization. Through filling out some forms and following the steps on the Student Activities Centers website.

You decided to join a student organization, next up is the actual meetings. All clubs are different in this respect and have their information about their meetings on their student org page in the student organization directory.

From here you can see the amount of time and frequency in which they meet. Some are multiple days a week, some weekly, biweekly, monthly and so on to whatever specific desire they have to meet up.

The first meeting you go to may be uncomfortable as student organizations are typically holding more formal meetings in expectation of a couple of people to check them out. If you ride out the wave of awkwardness, you’re bound to find a solid place of belonging and hopefully a good time.