Ode to AIESEC

This Sunday I helped the guys in AIESEC with the interviews. It was 8 o’clock in the evening and I was in the office evaluating together with everybody else when I realized that I could barely see before my eyes. It was indeed very, very tiring. I remember the spring recruitment: I had a day in which I did two group interviews and ten individual interviews, but was able to smile and have fun at the end of the day. I compared that feeling with the one I had on Sunday evening (when, though I could smile – and I did – I was so fucking beat after having ten individual interviews).

And some say that motivation doesn’t give you wings. HA!!! I know now for sure that, for me at least, it does provide wings. And not only that motivation provides you with wings, but you also use them. Because I realized that, while now I was doing my best to try and help some friends, back then I was doing my best to contribute to the success of our organization.

But, apart from being dead-tired, I enjoyed having an outsider’s look on how things are going in @. That exercise of observation made me write this “Ode to @”.

- It’s weird how easy we forget : the Vision of this recruitment is written on a flipchart and posted in the office. It says: “We have recruited high potential students that meet the development needs of AIESEC Bucharest and are motivated to go through a complete @XP”. In the next room you can hear words like “OK! We’ll take this one, give him something small to do and then send him in exchange in the summer”. I can remember that we were laughing at some other LCs in the country during the Recruitment Functional Meeting that they were planning to create what we called “small change agents” that being a person whose life in AIESEC would look like the one I just described earlier. Why do we keep forgetting so fast… especially things that are uncomfortable?

- Passion is everything: I saw people that were - maybe not as tired as I was - but still tired and that, after everything finished, knew that they still have to sort out the application forms, interview forms and so on (this being some boring, tiring work). And not only that they knew, but they wanted to do this and get it done. This, among others things I’ve seen, is passion and every time I saw this in the office I was invariably overjoyed. GREAT things are accomplished with passion.

- Arrogance is bliss: It came to me yesterday: it’s so fucking easy to be arrogant. To say that they are stupid, or that they are not doing the right thing, or that they are wasting time (your mother-fucking-precious time) and, with all that, to forget that YOU YOURSELF are one small, pitiful, low mother fucker. It’s easy to question whether everybody else is doing what they should while you loiter in your own, comfortable lameness. It’s easy to seem the God of them all and keep delegating tasks that you yourself do not know how to do. I acknowledge that I strongly RESENT this attitude.

- Living values, a reality: It’s nice to see that we were all far away from perfection, but still we strived for it. It was nice to see that people with so diverse backgrounds and personalities were able, not only to work together, but to have fun together. In a nutshell it was very nice to see that some people DO live the values that AIESEC has. And it was more enjoyable to see the fact that they did it unconsciously.

I’ve seen quite a lot in almost a year of AIESEC. I’m sure that I could have seen even more if I was to remain for another two or three years. But if there’s one thing I know foe sure, it’s that I will ALWAYS recommend AIESEC as the GREATEST experience that you can access during your student life. And I know that this is true and I won’t let anybody to try and tell me otherwise.

There’s a thought (that maybe will remain untold, at least for the time being) that SCREAMS: “Go ahead guys!!! Don’t stop!!! Go ahead and do what YOU know best! And never stop until this world will be a much better place for everybody!!!

Food for thought: Why is it sometimes so hard to convince others that what you are saying is true?

ROCK ME pic

  

The end of another chapter

The galaxy is full of stars and planets. Earth is just one of them. Earth is full of people (some 6 billion of them, if I’m not wrong). I am one of them. My life is made of lots of chapters. AIESEC was just one of them. And it’s over now.

I was laughing at myself the other day while I was rememorizing the many thoughts that wandered through my mind in the last four-five weeks. The decision-making process that started with the question: “Do I still want to run for VP PD?” and developed into another, more drastic question that needed a Yes-or-No answer: “Do I still want to be in @?” I was laughing because it was the most serious thing I’ve done in a long, long time; I had to use every ounce of energy I had; I challenged myself to look onto the issue from all the perspectives that I could have got; and so on.

It’s a nice exercise to have, especially after a period when you treat things serious, but definitely not too serious because it was too risky (as in you can lose it if you take things too seriously). This time around it was all serious, from the beginning ‘till the very end; it was so because I had to take a decision that would then impact the remainder of my life, the whole of it. Overall it was a very nice experience.

The funniest part, though, came just after I had made my mind; just after I knew that I was about to leave: it was the part when I wanted to see what AIESEC was for me (in the real sense); it was the time when I wanted to “evaluate my @XP”. The funniest part in this was rememorizing the stages I passed through, regarding attitude towards AIESEC and its impact on my life. The flow was something like: hatred (I haven’t learned anything from this organization because I only did what I knew best and I knew more than I did); indifference (maybe I learned a couple of things… maybe not… anyway, it wasn’t that good; let’s say that not so bad either); love (look at all these people around me and how they are growing; they would be so much worse without AIESEC. I’m sure that this is applicable in my case also); fear (was I wrong in the decision I had taken?); RESPECT (I do RESPECT this organization and I do acknowledge the progress I made with its help; I do SEE that AIESEC makes so many people so much better, me included; I do KNOW that things could be better... but is there a perfect thing in this world; I AM SURE that leaving was the best thing for me; I WISH, with all my heart, that @ will be better and better each day. It was what I was striving for every day of my @XP, and I am SURE that this will happen ALWAYS because I do BELIEVE in @ers, especially in those that I know better, the ones from Bucharest).

Food for thought: I know that the vast majority of people tend to say that quality is better than quantity, but what should be done in order to get these people to actually believe this and to act upon this on a daily basis?