Congratulations, you go to Northwestern. Your life consists of classes, a social life (hopefully), and trying to figure out the future. Throw in a few extracurricular activities and a job and you have yourself quite a busy schedule, as well as a fairly standard Northwestern experience, if such a thing exists.

But then you’re asked to run for Treasurer of your sorority. Your a cappella group needs someone to take charge of arranging music, the Social Chair of your dorm just quit, and you finally made it into BLAST. Not to mention your weekly commitment to Campus Kitchens, and you really need to keep your job at Norris. So what’s a Northwestern student to do?

Stock up on Red Bull, kiss the Dean’s List goodbye, and dive in.

Spreading yourself too thin is not exactly a rare phenomenon at Northwestern, and you may be happy (or incredibly distressed) to learn that such behavior doesn’t have to end in college — particularly if you fancy yourself a budding politician. Whatever complexes you develop here can follow you into the rest of your life, especially if you take a job in Congress. (I hear Senate seats in particular are available at a store near you.)

According to the ASG student group directory, there are over 350 groups at Northwestern, or about 1 for every 23 students. (So many options!) Compare that to Congress. With 535 members (plus five non-voting, but committee-serving delegates) and 219 committees and subcommittees, that works out to about one committee per two members.

Talk about spreading yourself thin.

Most members of Congress sit on at least five, if not more — and with a new Congress in the process of divvying up committee assignments for the new session, voters need to be aware of what exactly their representatives are getting themselves into by taking on so many posts.

The problem with spreading yourself too thin – both at Northwestern and in Congress – is that something is going to get the shaft. You may forget to pick up the decorations for your dorm’s Halloween munchies, or you may neglect to read the fine print for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Bill that will change the way Americans interact with intelligence agencies.

The idea behind the Congressional committee system is that it allows members to specialize, thus lowering the amount of time they supposedly spend trying to read through every single brief. But the most important function of committees has become determining the congressional power structure. And just like the correct activity can pad a college student’s résumé, a well-placed committee assignment can greatly increase a congressperson’s street cred and his individual importance to special interests that will donate money to his coffers. Small fries, right?

Not really.

In college, spreading yourself too thin ends up being inefficient because you are unable to commit enough time to any one activity to make any sort of impact. The problem is slightly different in Congress; you spread yourself thin enough that you can only care about one thing, and everything else becomes politically motivated. After all, it’s easy to barter for the votes of an entire committee if they don’t really care, or they represent another body identified with one party or another – just like you’re at that student advocacy group meeting because hell, they just need more people. This sets up the tenets of congressional vote trading; you vote for my bill, I’ll vote for yours. You join this club with me, I’ll join that club with you. The seeds of corruption are thus sewn.

The problems get worse in the offices of smaller states, which naturally have smaller staffs. Representatives from Hawaii may have a D.C. staff of 25, while a representative from California has a D.C. staff of more than twice that size. This is not to say that representatives from smaller states should have fewer committee assignments, but a recognition of the reality of personal limits might go a long way to aiding efficiency and legislative effectiveness.

It’s not easy to be a member of Congress, and it certainly isn’t a piece of cake to attend Northwestern. But congressional committees are where the work gets done in Congress, and student groups are the cherry on top of a fantastic university. Both would be more effective if its members would stop spreading themselves too thin.

Full disclosure: The author served as a Senate intern for 10 weeks in the summer of 2008.