I've put in over 600 hours in the astronomy club this year. Outreach events, board meetings, phone calls, library events etc. For all that effort we got a whopping TWENTY new members. I want to rant, I want to rage, I want to quit. Because fuck all this effort. I'm too stubborn and dense to quit though.
On a somewhat smaller scale, I get you. While I didn't set any goals for myself or joined MMM, I was trying to get more members to various physics clubs that I'm in. I've spent three weeks researching stuff for my presentation, badgered people to consider joining it, arranged two guest lectures and in the end we lost three people the moment they graduated and this isn't even a student-only club. This week I gave my presentation in front of eight people. That's not even half of that club! Truly depressing sight, standing at the centre of auditorium designed to hold about three hundred people and realising that it didn't manage to fill even first row. Feel free to rant away. I don't know about quitting, but if you think that getting away from it for at least a while would help: do it.I've put in over 600 hours in the astronomy club this year. (…) For all that effort we got a whopping TWENTY new members.
Man, do I fell you here. All I can offer is to use events like these as practice. Give those 8 people the best talk ever, really engage them. I've now given two talks that were well advertised, hypes on social media garbage, begged people to bring scopes and had everything set up perfect... for exactly one person to show up. At each event that person joined the club, so at least there is that. Non-profits, outreach anything that is not putting your face in front of a phone or clicking like on Facebook is thankless work. But if we don't do it, who will? Someone has to be the guy that builds something to leave in his wake, right?This week I gave my presentation in front of eight people. That's not even half of that club! Truly depressing sight, standing at the centre of auditorium designed to hold about three hundred people and realising that it didn't manage to fill even first row.
Things that die tend to stay dead. Colleges are littered with dead clubs, mentioned only briefly in yearbooks of ages long past. No matter what the thing is, astronomy, physics, knitting, cooking, programing, music, in my experience it is far easier to fan an ember that is glowing, no matter how dimly, than to start from nothing. To give a great example of this, the boy scout program that existed when I was a wee lad was allowed to die when the two couples running the whole thing had a falling out over policy. The town I grew up in did not have a scouting program for over a decade due to the void left in the wake of the collapse. As I was told a million years ago, "frustration builds character." Maybe that is true, yet the fight is not any less shitty though, is it? Then again "I kept the club alive" looks good on a resume; it shows you have a passion.Shame it's usually people like you and me. I don't know, maybe sometimes it's better to let something die so it could return from the ashes? I'm on the fence here, as on one hand I got great experience mainly thanks to having a small group, but part of me would want to see more people involved.