“Sleep is an Emotion”
As I am writing this article at twelve in the evening after a delightful and delicious Business Dinner, only one thought pops up in my head. This thought is best described by the words of one of my fellow boardies Björn: “Sleep is an emotion, you can simply switch it off.”
When starting my board year, I had a hard time imagining what I would actually be doing for an entire year; my expectations were very vague. Of course, the previous board prepared us thoroughly for the coming year, although I was somewhat sceptical about many things they told us.
One of these things was the fact that you could count yourself quite fortunate if you managed to have an evening off every one or two weeks. Being the stubborn little brat that I am, I thought they were exaggerating heavily. Surely there cannot be that many events that eliminate the possibility to extend your social activities beyond anything Astrics related? Rarely have I been more wrong. In the three months following our announcement I have lost track of the sheer amount of evenings spent at the rooms, and the endless stream of announcement and constitution drinks.
Many more phenomena have astounded me so far. For example, I can arrive at the rooms at 09.00 hours and leave somewhere in the evening, without having any idea of what I did that entire day. Yet when looking back at the day, I come to the conclusion that I managed to spend an entire day doing (somewhat) relevant stuff. I shall not bore you with the details; I doubt I can entertain any sane person with the fact that tomorrow my entire day will be filled with all kinds of bookkeeping shenanigans for the first Financial Monitoring meeting.
I enjoy every minute I have to try to make this great association even better
While I (usually) know what I am doing, a more worrying fact is perhaps that I, after three months, still struggle to see what my fellow partners in crime do for a living. Usually when I look up from my computer, I see Ennia sitting on the other side of the desk working hard (or pretending to work hard). However, my understanding of her endeavours barely transcend the fact that she works with the members database and Facebook.
Thijs is also an interesting case (in many ways as a matter of fact). As the day goes on, my time spent explaining people that Thijs is not here but somewhere else on the first floor of the Esplanade building greatly outweighs the time that I actually see Thijs. My understanding of the work Thijs is doing all day goes as far as the fact that I know he walks around all day. I have yet to find out why he actually does this. My guess is that he uses it as exercise to compensate for the consumption of alcoholic beverages and the distinct lack of other sportive activities. After all, one of the goals of any board member is to minimize the amount of ‘bestuurskilo’s’ gained in one year.
If I were to write about all the peculiarities I have encountered during my board year so far, I could go on all night. However, tomorrow is already filled with tons of stuff to do, and while I may not enjoy all the tasks I have to do during the day, I enjoy every minute I have to try to make this great association even better. Whenever it requires me to waive certain trivialities such as a proper night’s rest, I just think of the wise words of Björn: “Sleep is an emotion”.
Text by: Thomas (Coenraad) van Manen
