After our last blog post on Wednesday about exciting and career-enhancing extracurricular activities you can do at university, we had a great response from you, the great studying and working public of this fine nation. In addition to people saying that they hadn’t thought of their university choice in terms of the extras offered beyond the course and the university’s social scene, we had people beseeching us to tell us more about other extracurricular options that university could bring them.

Never wanting to disappoint you guys, today we’d like to present you with another two extracurricular activities you can get involved with at university that will help you develop a satisfying social life, supplement your skills and kick-start your future career.

#1 The Officers’ Training Corps

This one is a great option for those of you who like the idea of excitement, adventure and the camaraderie that comes from gruelling military training. In other words, skip past this one if your idea of a good time is not crawling through the countryside at 4 am.

But for those of you who are curious about military life or think it’d be a great way to become a real leader of men and women, read on.

Although one of the ideas behind the Officers’ Training Corps is to create future military officers out of the brightest and best of Britain’s young people, in reality the majority of people who get involved with it at university do not go on to a career in the armed forces. Nevertheless, the three years of training they put into the OTC is definitely time well spent. For in addition to learning the key skills of life in the field and testing the limits of their physical capabilities, people in the OTC develop some really important professional skills (we won’t be including how to kill a man in this category, though you never know when it could come in useful…).

For example, leading teams of people and working under intense pressure are at the heart of the officer’s job. And if you can develop these skills through combat training, you’ll definitely be capable of using them in the workplace. Think of it as another example of Dodgeball‘s Patches O’Houlihan’s maxim that “If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.”

#2 Charity work

Volunteering is quite possibly something you’ve been doing already for the last couple of years, either because you’re a nice person or because it’s a way of making your UCAS application look good (we’re not here to judge your motives).

But charity work at university takes place on a completely different level. Rather than being just a foot soldier on the front line of volunteering, at university you have a real chance to oversee some really important charitable projects. Almost every university has a RAG week of fundraising, in which students come up with all sorts of novel ways to raise oodles of cash for good causes.

And outside of RAG week there are chances to be in charge of spectacular fundraising initiatives, whether in the form of packing out a club with a night of top DJs or organising a mass sponsored hitch-hike across Europe. If you think you might be interested in a career in project management (and why wouldn’t you, given the pay packet you’d be rewarded with?) or with an NGO or charity, these sorts of activities are perfect for you.

But it’s not just about fundraising. Students also volunteer for all sorts of other things and apply their considerable skills to helping others. If you’re a law student, for example, there are opportunities to get involved with legal advice clinics; and linguists can get a taste of life as an interpreter by volunteering with refugee charities and helping people who speak no English.