Interview Gaia

I am Gaia, and I am the Chair of Flow. That means that I oversee everything that happens within the Daily Board and the association as a whole. Everyone in the Daily Board has their own tasks and I make sure that I do mine and also ask everyone else about theirs. Besides that, I keep a big picture view, looking at what we need to do per month and whether we’re on track. Then, I also have my own committees, which are the Symposium and the InFlow Committee, where I mostly have a passive role; the commissioners and committee members do the real work. I just make sure I am there to make sure everything goes okay. 

I started out two years ago as an active member, and then did a year as a commissioner. After that, I wanted to do more within Flow, so I finished “climbing the ladder” so to say and became a Daily Board member! I had been thinking about doing it for like a year before I actually ended up doing it, mostly because last year was really not the right timing; I already had a whole plan for the courses I wanted to take for my minor. Then this year, the board year allowed me to take it a bit easier with my thesis, which made it almost a logical choice at that point. 

Other than that, I also needed time to get used to the idea, because it's a big time investment, and I’m the type of person who usually has to get used to the idea of things. I think it was the right choice to wait, as last year I really got a good idea of everything the Daily Board did and how much fun it was for them! 

- So there were still a lot of firsts at that time as well?

Yes! The Daily Board of that year also had some members that I knew beforehand and were roughly part of my cohort. It was really fun to see them do their work, and made me feel more prepared going into my board year.

Every new board definitely does a lot of things differently. In the Educational Pillar, we wanted to bring back Pub Lectures. The idea of these is that we sit down with a professor in Van Horen Zeggen and talk about their work field or research in a really casual way. It was something that was already organized a couple of years ago and then died down again. We thought it could be very fun to bring back, so we organized two of those this year. I hope that next year they continue, because I thought it was really fun. 

Within the Professional Pillar, we really wanted to expand the Flow Member Card. So, this year we got a lot of very nice deals and discounts our members can use, which I'm really proud of. If you’re in the city center just getting a coffee or a bite to eat, you can get discounts at some very cute cafes! 

For the Social Pillar, we changed up the newsletter, which was also a personal point that I really wanted to work on this year. Since I had been in the InFlow Committee for two years, I already had quite some experience with creating and sending the newsletters. I'm really proud of how it looks now; I think it looks a lot nicer than last year. Besides that, the added design element makes it way more fun to work on as well.

I'm not really a person who remembers a specific event, but I rather remember small snippets throughout the year. I'll have little moments where I'll think “A year ago we were doing this big event, and now I'm sitting here studying. That's crazy.” I already have this now while working with the Candidate Board, remembering the time last year when my board was working on their policy plan. I think that counts for a lot of stuff, but I'll only realize how much fun I had and how much I actually did this year in the upcoming months.

If I had to pick, though, I would say the biggest highlights for me were the big activities such as the Study Trip, the Association Weekend, as well as the Career Day. There are just so many events to pick from, and it doesn’t help that we were there for basically all activities. I have so many fond memories of this year that I’ll probably keep thinking back to this period for the rest of my life and think: “I can't believe we actually did this”.

I'm trying to think of some show that's about an unlikely team coming together and having to manage their resources and come to a solution, since that’s what this year felt like at times. Maybe the best fit is Totally Spies. That would make the Council of Advice the old guy, Jerry, which I think is very fitting. I think the show describes us really well, because they have to be super serious sometimes, but they're also just girls. So one moment they're shopping or chilling, and then the next they need to save the world. I think that's definitely what it felt like at times haha. 

Honestly, first we would pay the commissioners. Currently, the commissioners work on a volunteering basis, but with the effort they put in, I think it is more than fair that they get paid or at the very least get something really nice like a spa day, if we would have infinite money. 

In terms of activities, we will make the Study Trip cheaper and go to a really special location, like South Korea or America. We won’t make it free because otherwise we will attract too many people from outside the association and would have a group of 100+ people. I wouldn’t wanna do that to the Study Trip Committee! Then, why not increase the budget for the Symposium. This year we already hosted a big speaker, but I would have it be organized in a bigger space with a ton of promotion and huge speakers like Arjen Lubach or Tim Hofman. Just put a bunch of posters and signs around the city, perhaps, similar to how MAK did it with their MAK Talk. Other than that, it’s hard to choose, because if you have massive events now, what could you possibly do during the Lustrum year to top that? For example, it would be really fun to have a massive gala or a bigger date dinner! Then you could have people sleep over in a big venue somewhere and arrange buses for everyone. Then, as a cherry on top of the cake, we can rent out a huge mansion somewhere in the south of France for the Association Weekend.

- I like how the things you've said are a mix of what the commissioners have said. 

Haha, that is true! Though, besides these really massive, impressive events, I think the smaller activities we already organize are really fun for people who are just studying and cannot afford to spend every weekend going to France. Smaller activities don't cost so much money, but they are often the most fun. That's another reason why I would pay like the commissioners! That way they have even more opportunities to organize fun events. 

Ask for help whenever you need it. Not just to the previous board, but also the boards before that or just active or long-time members. It's always really beneficial to talk to people. Sometimes it may even change your perspective more than you thought. So just talk to as many people as you can and also try to realize that even though it's important that you do a good job, you can only do the best up to your capabilities. As long as you try your best, as long as you work together in a group, as long as everyone's having fun, at the end of the day, everything is going to be okay. Most people won’t even see the mistakes that you make, which you thought might be the end of the world. After all, we're not changing the world, we're just trying to make life and studying more fun for a relatively small group of students at a pretty small university. It's all relative, and it's important to remember that.