Clubs in high school are a definite must and basically engraved into the full high school experience. Clubs offer a variety of opportunities that are unreachable without them, such as volunteer events at marathons, local organizations, and small companies. The clubs that offer these opportunities are often labeled as service clubs and for AHS, three of the most popular ones include Interact Club, Leo Club, and Key Club. Clubs like these offer a diverse and unique environment that allows you to explore new possibilities.

Interact Club is a service club on campus that gears their focus on the community around us. They help local schools with events such as Highland Oaks’ annual Thanksgiving festival. Their slogan is “Service Above Self” and to Community Service Director Wendy Wang, she says Interact stands behind this motto because it “means taking the time out of our daily lives to help benefit others instead of ourselves.” Interact not only allows you to make new friends, but it also allows you to get connected with the community around you. Being able to experience the relationships between other schools opens your eyes to the raw teamwork that goes into communities such as AUSD. These opportunities also allow you to make new friends in ways that you would never imagine like through serving food together at a function or selling snacks together at a tournament. Wendy adds onto this by saying that “Interact provides a range of events that interest all kinds of members” so finding new friends would be inevitable.  For me personally, I have made good friendships with seniors last year through a service event, in which I never would have if it weren’t for the need of our cooperation.

Leo Club is another service club on campus. This club focuses greatly on leadership, experience, and opportunities, hence the acronym LEO. For them, community service is what most of their events consist of and those events bring skills that aide leading roles such as team leaders, as well as the opportunities for collaboration. As these are key points to what Leo offers, Publicity Director Elena Chan would like to add that, Leo Club is special because “the opportunities allow members to help out the community, gain friends, and leadership experience.” She also added that she chose to be a part of this club because “ this club isn’t as superficial and separated as other clubs may seem.” Leo wants to emphasize that their main goal for each and every one of their members is to gain life experiences and understanding the meaning of service in a whole new way. Leo Club aides events such as the Arcadia Giving Campaign, which brings service to a whole new level in that members who participate gain a newfound experience and it also helps the city of Arcadia. Through the campaign, students have countless opportunities to give back to the community through fundraisers and service events. I have not experienced Leo for myself, but from what I have heard, it truly is a new experience and one that you can never forget.

Lastly, we have Key Club, a service club on campus that reps the seals with silver and teal! This club has the key focus of making service fun for students in a unique way. Their slogan is “Caring, Our Way of Life” which goes to show Key Club’s core values of compassion and empathy. One way that Key Club manages to stick out from the others is this very hyped event that is hosted by Key Club called Fall Rally. At this event, Key Club takes buses to go to Six Flags along with other Key Clubs from different parts of the country, and we spend the day at the park showing our spirit. Every ‘division’ has a different mascot and color in which is our symbol and that is what we show off at this event. Alongside this, Key Club hosts bonding events and other volunteer opportunities that provide a fun, interactive environment that allows you to do service while having tons of fun.

These three service clubs have definitely made a mark in AHS and if not for the students who join it, it would definitely not be that way. Whether you join to have a good time or college climb your way by becoming an officer, it would definitely be an experience that you would not want to miss.