Clubs offer students opportunity to develop valuable skills
Freshmen and Chess Club members Shasin Timalsina, Joseph Kwon, Ishan Palapra and Dhruv Jana play games against each other after school to heighten their skills on Feb. 3.
April 17, 2023
From friendly competition to digging in the dirt to working with electronics, clubs give students a wide variety of opportunities. For example, given the opportunity, students can benefit themselves by learning how to code or seeing how to take care of a plant. These clubs are chess, gardening and robotics.
Chess Club (Every Friday in Room 138)
Chess has been played for over a millennium, collecting players and chess fanatics, because it provides endless entertainment to fulfill one objective, according to Chess. During Friday meetings after school at 3 p.m. in Room 138, students gather together to set up chess boards and play this game. Since the game allows for an infinite amount of plays due to its many possible openings according to Chess, students are able to learn new skills like advanced thinking and strategic planning.
“It basically teaches you to look ahead and kind of predict what’s going to happen, which I think is important for decision making,” Chess Club senior Adwait Dermunlin said.
The game allows students to test their skills of reasoning and logic. The game starts off by moving the pawn, afterwards players can now begin to move their other pieces freely. The main objective is to capture the king on the other side using their own pieces while defending their own. It’s a game of strategy and thinking two steps ahead of the opponent.
“The thing about chess and Chess Club in general is that it’s a fun and social experience,” Dermunlin said. “It’s good to be in a club where you just play with others and are able to test your skills of reasoning, logic and decision making. Playing chess has definitely made me apply my brain’s logical and critical thinking skills a lot more.”
Gardening Club (Every Wednesday in Room 231)
The Gardening Club is a place for students to be able to explore a variety of projects relating to gardening, these include creating small gardens on school grounds. Students who come to the club and have no experience of being a gardener are able to learn and become one.
“The Gardening Club is basically a club where we plan and complete several gardening projects around the school and community,” club junior Griffin Lewandowski said.
With the club having several projects around the school and community, students have the opportunity to volunteer in which projects they would like to participate in. Having multiple projects being worked on at once, this allows members to beautify the community more efficiently. These include planting vegetables and herbs at home which they care for and starting a flower garden at school.
“We participate in a whole bunch of projects and I would say that this would give others the ability to be committed to making sure they are participating,” Lewandowski said.
The Gardening Club meets once a month every Wednesday in Room 231 discussing their next plans on what to do for their next project. No experience is needed when joining the Gardening Club to become a gardener; everyone who’s ever grown something started as a novice. Gardening improves many features of mental health and focus, it can make the mind feel more at peace and at ease according to WebMD.
“After joining, I felt that we had a good sense of a community within the club and with all the outdoor projects going on I definitely feel that gardening has the potential to relieve stress,” Lewandowski said.
Robotics Club (Every Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays in Room 569)
Ever since robotics began in 2001 at CHS, the robotics community has grown in population from a small project to over 100 members working year-round on numerous projects. The Robotics Club meets in the Engineering Room (Rm. 569) every week on Mondays from 3 p.m. to 9 pm. Wednesdays from 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Thursdays from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
“Our robotics club specifically, we are the FRC (First Robotics Competition),” senior and programming captain Arjun Mudda said. “We compete in the first robotics competition and we’re building these mechanisms and incorporating different STEM applications.”
Because the Robotics Club is a competition organization that works with various STEM programs, students are able to develop advanced reasoning and thinking skills. This allows students to be more collaborative in teams, achieve objectives creatively and to be more productive.
“It’s really valuable to join in robotics because you’re going to deal with soft skills including talking and having to coordinate with others,” Mudda said. “As the programming captain, I know I’m getting really nice computer science skills. So for example, I’ve seen some of my friends who are now in college using their skills that they learned from robotics and applying it to their classes.”
People who have never dealt with robots or coding have other ways to participate in the club. The Robotics Club has four different sub teams that are mechanical, programming, electrical and marketing.
“I would definitely recommend our club because we deal with a lot of different applications, not just computer sciences,” Mudda said. “We’re still open to having more members since it would give a different perspective.”
