A Look into the Executive Committee

I’m Melody, a 1st year 2nd semester E Track student from Myanmar.
I was never good at socializing. As a 1st year E-Track student, I had a lot on my plate during my first semester. Juggling a part-time job while trying to keep up good grades is hard enough for a lazy procrastinator like me, so I never had to time to have an active social life. I didn’t have a lot of friends, and all my free time was just spent binge-watching TV shows or working on assignments at the last minute.

I made some friends at my Japanese class, two lovely girls called Mira and Thinn. We hit it off, going for dinner at the kebab place in front of campus 1 and spending hours at Saizeriya talking about nothing and everything. It was with them that I decided to join the School Festival Execution Committee. None of us were in any clubs, and we thought “Why not? This could be a fun new experience for us”. And so it begins.

I have never been very active in extracurricular activities. My social anxiety always gets the best of me whenever I consider joining some kind of club. Somehow, the committee became a very important part of my student life.

The committee is made up of both J track and E Track students. It was a little intimidating at first, as I have zero experience interacting with J Track students, but every meeting is fun now. My Japanese has been improving little by little since I joined. Each and every one of our members is special in their own ways.

Mira, our president, is absolutely wonderful at singing and is our main translator. Wan is always so cheerful and she usually ends up being the one extrovert who actually hands out our flyers while the rest of us cower at her back. Zono, our resident clown, keeps our spirits up with his silly faces, and he’s an absolute genius with the piano. Ngan’s oatmeal candies are a must-have at our meetings.

Naoko sometimes teaches us German phrases she learned from her class. Thinn’s usually pretty quiet except for the times she laughs at the dumb things I do. Aliya and Naya like to draw random things on the blackboard (spoiler alert: they’re not good at drawing). Everyone loves Goto san, one of the student affairs team members that we work with. Conversations with Douchi san are always fun, usually ending in either a spontaneous Japanese or English lesson.

We are not a perfect team. We have our disagreements at times, like any other organization. But maybe this is what makes us a team. Mondays and Thursdays, the days that we have our meetings, have now become a highlight of my otherwise boring schedule. New members will be joining us next month, and I’m excited to welcome them into our committee. I can’t wait to see the results of our hard work at the International festival this November.