A Defense of Smash Bros Club (and the Lynbrook Mindset) (10/28/2018)

    Recently, some of my friends and I passed a Smash Bros. club in our school. Even before we started the club, when we were just spreading the word and gauging interest, we encountered a lot of negativity from various students at my school. Many people asked how this was going to prepare for college, or just straight up told us that it was horrible idea and there was no way we were going to get our club passed.
    Over the course of a few weeks, the rest of the officer team and I worked hard to get everything ready to try to pass our club. We wrote up an eight page, two thousand three hundred word long club proposal, and we even asked over twenty teachers to be the adviser for our club. Even with our hard work, many people still thought it was impossible. Still we persevered. We met up multiple times outside of school and video chatted to get our presentation revised and done. We planned out a video, although the video eventually wasn't implemented into the presentation because of time restraints. We even went to talk to individual LEG counsel representatives to convince them to vote for our club.
     Eventually, against all odds, we got the club passed. But, this didn't stop some of the students in my school, Lynbrook High, to still complain. "How did your stupid club get passed? All you do in that club is play video games. Your club is useless and won't do anything for college."
    These comments exemplify what I call the Lynbrook Mindset. Lynbrook is one of the top five best public schools in California, and it has a very success and prestige driven mindset. In my school, everyone strives for good grades or good test scores to get into a good college so you can get a good job so then you can make tons of money by becoming a doctor or engineer or coder or some other respected, high-paying job. But does it really matter? Is getting into an Ivy League really the best choice? Its good to study and work hard, but do you have to be perfect? Not everything is about college. Its important, but I believe that you should enjoy life while you still can. You still need good grades and a good test score, but its good to relax and hang out with your friends or maybe learn more about something you are interested in that may not be school oriented.
     Smash Bros. club probably won't be good when applying for college. It's not scholarly at all. But does that matter? For me, the point of a club isn't necessarily just to look good for Harvard or Stanford or maybe even UC Berkeley. It could just be a place to have fun, make friends, and do something I love. With this definition in mind, is there really anything wrong with Smash Club?

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