Towards the very end of the 2017-2018 school year, I was flooded by a sense of personal accomplishment upon achieving recognition for my role as Vice President after a demanding yet fulfilling campaigning process. At the beginning of the year the possibility of running for this role alongside with my friends arose. From this point onwards all was done to facilitate the challenging progress towards reaching the recognized position of Vice President. Achieving this role will allow me to arrive with positive external impacts and recognition towards the NIST student body in Year 10,11,12 and 13, thus having potential impacts on an organization beyond myself.
From the very start of the year, with discussions as a friend group, we started critiquing aspects of the community that we wanted to slightly change and introduce things back such as Falcons news. We found that it wasn't the easiest to get our voices heard and therefore alluded to actually joining the Student Council Committee. Although at the time, I thought it was extremely unrealistic and unlikely to happen, we began to discuss more and more and before we knew it attempted to set smaller goals to build up to this role. Afterwards, I individually started noticing aspects of our school that I thought could be improved and came towards the points of transparency and allowing our voices to be heard. I developed a list of things that I wanted to achieve that could potentially build my campaign towards the end of the year. Although I had developed an understanding of what I wanted to get done, towards the second semester I pondered about why people would actually want me to be their next Vice President. I later realised that credibility was essential and hence set myself a goal to develop my sense of approachability as well as joining service groups that I had a genuine interest in. As a result I found myself joining both NIST Tech and Mushi-Mushi, two service groups in NIST. This came to great value because I understood the importance of collaborating in such an environment that better prepared me for the requirements of the role.
As time went by, I found that my individual smaller steps eventually built up and allowed me to gain confidence in my ability to lead. Upon receiving an email from the HS Student Council regarding applications for the new executive committee, I immediately turned to the job descriptions and felt relieved when I felt much more confident in my ability to be more open to ideas, organized, committed and being able to lead through delegating roles across the council. I then followed through by filling in the application form expressing my reasons for wanting to be a member of the student council. I expressed how I am a new member who has fresh ideas and a willingness to stand up for the NIST community. I have seen significant progression in the student council’s actions throughout the past years and am always thinking about more ways to improve. And finally how I am particularly motivated to further increase interaction as I highly value the opinions of the student body.
Most importantly I outlined my main aims as possible member of the student council that formed the basis of my campaign and goes as follows:
- Further promote students ideas and suggestions through organizing regular activities and platforms to submit ideas (Surveys, Pannels)
- Encourage and Publicize service activities in the NIST community.
- Involve Administrative team in meetings to discuss any concerns, plan events or express any thoughts from the student body.
- Encourage/increase the use of technology in various ways (VR for education, Testing new platforms to inform and involve the student body)
- Actively involve the NIST community, planning events to increase school spirit whilst
- promote transparency between the student council’s progression and the students/teachers.
As soon as I concluded the application form with my favorite quote, “Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass but learning to dance in the rain”, I submitted the form and the campaigning process soon followed. As previously discussed, joining the student council was a joint discussion that started with my peers at the beginning of the year and therefore I was co-campaigning with the potential president at the time who shared the exact same values and basis of campaign that I did. Afterwards, we both went along with the campaigning and began to thoroughly plan posters that would have appealed to the student body. The posters varied in content including serious ones that allowed us to present our values, as well as ones that were more humorous, allowing us to represent a more approachable personality so that the study body are not afraid to suggest their opinions.
Unfortunately, during our thorough campaigning process that was inclusive of going through over 12 poster ideas that were condensed into 6 and posted around the school, a large obstacle was faced. Due to an unforeseen circumstance in the potential President's position, he was no longer eligible to run for the role. As evident, this was a plan for both of us since the beginning of the process but after thorough consideration and reflection with my peers, we decided that it would be best for me to continue with the election alone to ensure that the perspectives, values and ideas of both of us could be maintained. Hence I was required to persevere because this event was immediately followed by a panel that required me to answer the various questions that the student body had for the candidates, allowing me to develop skills in communication and overcome fears of being put on the spot.
After working hard to create a speech that was concise yet informative and humorous, I worked even harder to develop my presentation skills so that the presentation could be developed in a way that sounded genuine, exciting and engaging for the audience. The speech is arguably the deciding factor for most students and therefore I needed to ensure that my content and delivery was perfect. Upon practicing for days, the day of the elections were finally here. Upon taking a deep breath before picking up the mic and speaking in front of the largest audience I ever had, I was greeted with the laughter and claps of the student body after completing my speech with the perfect amount of intonation and power as planned. After deep reflection, I was proud of my successful development throughout the entire process that has allowed me to personally grow in my engagement in the community, ability to lead, ability to speak, ability to campaign and ability to persevere. Regardless of the outcome, I was self assured that I did the best I could do and that the other 4 candidates delivered exceptional speeches.
However at the very end of the day, an email was sent to the entire student body, and I was surprised by the congratulations of all previous student council members that announced I was the next Vice President for the 2018 to 2019 Academic school year. I was successfully able to gain recognition from the email sent to the entire student body from Year 9 to 13 at a paraprofessional level after going through a challenging process. As a result I have been given a great platform to follow through with my values listed above to create positive change through the external recognition and role that I will have in the following year. Overall this process has been highly valuable and I am looking forward to what I can accomplish throughout the year.
