– Kaumadi\nJayaweera, circa 2020.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n First, I must tell you that in this\narticle I will not dive into an immaculate account of my trials and\ntribulations of 12 months as a Vice President of Public Relations, or dish out\nthe intricate details behind the mechanism with which the 19\/20 ExCo of Gavel\nUoC managed to hold the Club in one piece for a whole year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Somewhere around August last year (I think) I was presented with the passwords to all the social media accounts and the email account of Gavel UoC, and I was advised to use them wisely and responsibly. I knew what kind of content had been posted on each social media account by the previous VPPRs, and even before the installation, I had drafted a PR plan which I was eagerly waiting to follow in the following 12 months. Without getting into whether that plan was followed or not, let me reminisce instead of some of the things I came to learn over the past year as a member of the 19\/20 ExCo of Gavel UoC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In order to make it easy on my poor brain that has been much clogged by quarantine-mush, I\u2019ll proceed in point form. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 01)\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to popular understanding, a Gavel Club\u2019s Executive\nCommittee is created when a group of individuals have been appointed and\ninstalled to the respective roles and told what to do for the next 12 months to\nkeep the Club \u2018running\u2019. However, in my experience, I would like to refer to an\nExCo more as a \u2018concept\u2019 than a group of individuals, the existence of which is\nbased not on the presence of a group of people who fill the roles, but on the\ncollective effort of the said individuals to \u2018create\u2019 an ExCo. In other words,\nI believe that you won\u2019t be an \u2018ExCo\u2019 without actively participating in\n\u2018creating\u2019 an ExCo every single day of your term. The moment you stop trying to\nimprove or to move on to do something bigger, the moment you decide to sit back\nand relax thinking that your \u2018job\u2019 is done and that everything is \u2018under\ncontrol\u2019, you might lose the sense of being an ExCo. You might as well be just\na group of people, maybe a group of friends, until you collectively create an\nExCo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 02)<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the beginning of your term you will come across an\ninteresting guidebook called the \u201cClub Leadership Manual\u201d, and in the case of\nPR there\u2019s a manual called the \u201cPublicity and Promotion Handbook\u201d. In addition\nto this, your predecessor will hand you down the necessary tips, documents,\ndetails, and contacts necessary to do your job, and you will receive a few\nrules and guidelines you must abide by. But, in my humble opinion, being a good\nand efficient ExCo member is something you must figure out for yourself. No two\nExecutive Committees are the same, and the plans you make and the situations\nyou go through are unique. In the best-case scenario, it will take only a few\nweeks for you to get a grip on it and fit in. Or you might feel that you know\nwhat you\u2019re doing, but suddenly lose the sense of it all. Or it might take you\nall 12 months of your term to figure it out. In the worst-case scenario, you\nwill never make proper sense of it. Nobody can tell you what it is like to be\nan ExCo member, or teach you how to be one or do your job. You must figure it\nout yourself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 03)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every year, with every new ExCo that has come to serve our\nClub, Gaveliers with unique and unmatched talent and potential have brought in\nphenomenal changes and improvements to the Club. However, as I have witnessed\nfor 12 months, the unique talents and potential of people can be put to use for\nthe benefit of the club, only if they are facilitated through space and\nopportunities. Every year the nine members of the ExCo are selected from of a\nlarge group of Gaveliers who are willing to sacrifice their time, energy,\nexperience and skills for the Club, and it is a duty of the ExCo to be creative\nand make space for all its members to give what they can to the Club. This not\nonly makes all ExCo members feel useful and satisfied, but it also makes their\noverall duty much easier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 04)<\/p>\n\n\n\n You must go easy on yourself. While it is understood that\nbeing an ExCo member of the Gavel Club is a duty that must be taken very\nseriously, I think that it is also important for members to check in on\nthemselves and avoid burnout. As much as you feel the need to outdo yourself\nwith every new project that comes your way, extreme stress and burnout will\nonly make you and others in the ExCo go through a tough time, and I don\u2019t think\neven the Club members would enjoy working with an ExCo that is constantly on\nthe edge and frustrated. I believe taking some time off to relax and sort out\nyour workload not only makes you efficient, but it also helps you with keeping\nyour sanity intact. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To wrap this up, here\u2019s a metaphor that will help me in\nexplaining what it\u2019s like to be an ExCo of a Gavel Club. Imagine the Club with\nall its members as a huge extended family, with several generations that\nconsist of grandfathers and grandmothers, aunties and uncles, nieces and\nnephews and more toddlers than you can care to count. You\u2019re somewhere in the\nsecond generation- the group that keeps an eye on the oldies while being held\naccountable by them for the wellbeing of the whole family, while taking care of\nthe newbies and making sure they fit well into the value system of the family.\nYou are the group that has to solve all the issues that arise within the\nfamily, and you\u2019re expected to be the abled and responsible representatives of\nit. There will be moments when you\u2019re exhausted, excited or exasperated.\nMoments when you know you\u2019re doing a great job of taking care of everyone and\neverything, and moments when you wonder whether you\u2019re doing a good job. You\nhave a lot to live up to, which include the expectations of yourself and\nothers, and above all you are supposed to shed blood, sweat and tears for the\nwellbeing of the family and all its members. You\u2019ve got to satisfy a lot of\npeople, take care of more people than you think is possible, keep the system\ntogether, and make sure you don\u2019t screw up too much. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Cheers! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cNo two Executive Committees are the same, and the plans you make and the situations you go through are unique.\u201d – Kaumadi Jayaweera, circa 2020. First, I must tell you that in this article I will not dive into an immaculate account of my trials and tribulations of 12 months as a Vice President […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":1696,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[117],"tags":[118,4,63,74,125,126],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gavel.cmb.ac.lk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gavel.cmb.ac.lk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gavel.cmb.ac.lk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavel.cmb.ac.lk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavel.cmb.ac.lk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1687"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavel.cmb.ac.lk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2138,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavel.cmb.ac.lk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687\/revisions\/2138"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavel.cmb.ac.lk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gavel.cmb.ac.lk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavel.cmb.ac.lk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavel.cmb.ac.lk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.gavel.cmb.ac.lk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/WhatsApp-Image-2020-08-12-at-1.40.09-PM-1024x683.jpeg\")
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