Chapter Twenty-Nine: Nothing That a First-Year Can't Do (~jinghan)

Last week I went to the Book Club AGM (Annual General Meeting). Every club has to have one to pick a committee etc. And frankly they seem quite scary so I never went to any until my friend asked me to come to this one with her because she wanted to be on the committee.

When we got into the room we weren’t given any time to loiter around awkwardly because chairs and tables were being thrown about everywhere. Despite there being only 5 people in the room at the start we decided to put out four tressel tables in the hope that more people would be coming. Pizzas were put before peoples noses and bits of paper with the meeting agenda, club standards and buget were casually passed about. (“Oh I totally thought it said you spent $56 on a copy of Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale. I was like, what?! It must’ve been like a gilt hand-written special edition or something. But then I realised that it said ‘book and gift vouchers'” said the boy on the other side of the table.)

“Sign the sheet! Sign the sheet! Don’t sit down, sign the sheet first!” Was what they said every time someone came through the door. We needed at least 20 people to sign the sheet. In the end someone took a box of pizzas out to get some more signatures. (Sh…)

The meeting was commenced with an introduction from the president, who read out her introduction in a very formal manner despite seeming to know everyone at the meeting personally anyway. After every item on the agenda they needed someone to attest to its being completed (I’m still not sure why this needed to be done) but someone would second this and then everyone in the room put up their hand in agreement (despite only needing one person to second their agreement.)

And so after many other unanimous decisions about the structure of the club and the management of the treasury, we went on to elect new members for the committee. Which was just as uncontroversial since only one person was nominated for each position that was needed to be filled. We didn’t even need to vote! The one little incident of controversy was when I nominated my friend for secretary and she turned down the nomination. “And she said ‘no.'” the scribe excitedly dictated as she wrote it down and everyone laughed.

I must say it was the most casual (but well structured) meeting that went ridiculously smoothly. As first years we didn’t feel a bit out of place. My friend accepted a position on the general committee in the end. Uni is not like when you start high school where you feel like you’ve been demoted to the bottom of the hierarchy after being at the top for primary school, there’s nothing a first-year can’t do that any other student can do. (Except perhaps graduate. Damn.)