This article illustrates some of the practices that turn young student men into political activists. It shows how everyday routine practices bring order and meaning to a social field of hierarchical competition and conflict amongst young men at Dhaka University. The focus is on those practices that make and shape the organisations everyday, involving and bringing people together in a collective of activism and exclude others. Routines continuously reconstruct relations of hierarchy, organisational order and operation, which on one hand, transform individuals from students into activists, on the other hand, it produces structured hierarchies and operational logics. It makes activism and shapes organisations. The article concludes that a focus on the internal dynamics of mobilising organisations, mundane intimate interactions and the display of public practices, can pay dividends when it comes to a deeper understanding of the formation of political activism.