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?