Hello there! It’s been a year since I became the Sergeant-at-Arms of the Gavel Club of the University of Colombo. Even though it’s been a year, I still feel like it was yesterday. I had a great deal of responsibility because of my position in the club, but I enjoyed every bit of it. I learned a lot by working along with other ExCo members, developed a lot of communication skills, especially when it comes to booking halls for educational meetings. Most importantly, I think I have furthered my leadership skills as well. I was also in charge of the banner of the club and the timer’s bell. Booking halls each and every week for the meetings at a glance seems like a boring and cumbersome task, but after getting the hang of it, I could deal with it comfortably.
There are a lot of experiences I had when I was holding the position of Sergeant-at-Arms. One of the most noteworthy experiences that I had was that there were times where I booked the hall at the last minute on the day of the meeting. It was really tense sometimes, but I could somehow finally make the meetings happen.
Now I recall a nice story about one of the unexpected fun incidents that we had in one of our meetings. It was held in one of the lecture halls at the Faculty of Arts. The hall was facilitated with lights, good ventilation and had a great atmosphere for the perfect educational meeting. Everyone was so engaged and excited about the meeting since the theme for that day was something related to “Randomness”. But that vibe only lasted for an hour. One of the non-academic staff members came to meet me while the meeting was going on and informed me that there is a lecture planned at that hall right at the time when we were having the meeting. I could see the students for that particular lecture were gathered around the door of the hall waiting for us to leave.
Guess what, we were given the Board Room of the Dean’s Office of the Faculty of Arts to finish off with the rest of the meeting by the office staff. Woah, right?! I mean it’s THE board room full of comfortable chairs, with well-lit air-conditioned space with a huge table to sit around, and with soundproof acoustics. I remember this especially because it matched with the theme of that meeting– “Randomness”.
From all the experiences that I had with Gavel while I was in the exco, I noticed that it is not hard to do something, even though it may seem difficult and not so exciting to do at first. This is true especially when it comes to booking halls. I felt really proud of myself after booking each and every hall in our term, just because of the fact that if it were not for me there won’t be a place to hold the meeting and that motivated me to keep booking halls more and more.
Well, that’s it for this one guys. Before I wind up, I am very pleased to mention that I am proud to be around a wonderful team of people as my fellow ExCo members and I am grateful to them. If my role stands for anything, it is that Gavel Never Stops.
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