Carleton’s Futures Thinking Club – And How You Can Start Your Own!

During first week of classes Fall term, incoming freshmen have the opportunity to attend the Club Fair, where they can check out the various student clubs and organizations on campus. Beware of their marketing strategies: club leaders stock up on sweet treats and snacks to attract naive first years! At any given point, Carleton College has about two hundred student organizations, including academic, cultural, and athletic clubs. And if you find that the current range of clubs does not cover your interests, you can always start your own!

That is what I did. As Pakistan’s representative to the United Nations’ Youth Force, I came to college with a microgrant, which I used towards founding and organizing Carleton’s Futures Thinking and Foresight Club. In our rapidly changing, uncertain world, our personal agencies are constantly threatened by forces and systems larger than us. Futures Thinking offers a range of skills that allow us to democratize discourse about these issues – like climate change, democracy, individual freedoms and AI.

In weekly workshops, we use tools like the Futures Triangle to map out three key categories. 

• The Pull of the Future: What is our ideal, preferred future for a given issue?
• The Weight of the Past: What has happened historically that prevents us from achieving this preferred future?
• The Push of the Present: What are some trends in our current reality that we can use to launch ourselves into this future?

This is a transferable framework that can be used to imagine what the ideal, preferred future of any given issue can look like, and allows us to trace our way back from there. Eventually, the point is to figure out what we need to do today to get to the futures we want. Recently, for example, we have been using the Futures Triangle framework to consider the financial viability of higher education institutions!

Starting your own club at Carleton is a pretty chill process. You can express your intention to start an organization with the Carleton Student Association, fill out a charter with ten potential members who would show up to your club (just trade treats with your friends for this step), pitch the point of your club to a CSA meeting, and voila! 

The robust student organization culture on campus speaks to the way students balance their academic interests with ample opportunities to have a vibrant social life! The Carleton community is tight-knit, and while you can see the same faces in classes, dining halls, hallways, and in Downtown Northfield, the student organization scene is always going to introduce you to new people and adventures!

This upcoming fall, I plan on using the remaining money from my microgrant to get the nicest snacks to bait you, my dearest prospective student readers, into joining my club. Not to brag, but last year, I had the most sign-ups to my mailing list, as compared to all of the other club leaders I talked to. But hey, it is not a competition (or is it?), and I am excited to welcome you to my club this upcoming term! 

Zainab (she/her/hers) is a rising junior from Pakistan. A Physics major, she is the founder of Carleton’s Futures Thinking and Foresight Club, a member of Semaphore, and passionate about singing. When not in class, she can be found side questing in the arb, learning some new skill, or wandering across Downtown Northfield.

Zainab has a background in climate activism and journalism. With over thirty publications in Urdu and English, she serves as a Youth Advisor to Pakistan’s Prime Minister, represents Pakistan to the United Nations’ Youth Force, and has worked with UNICEF for grassroots climate organization.