University of Leicester Student Awards

Recently I attended the university's annual student award event, that gives recognition to both individual students and student led societies that have been successful or had achievements over the course of the academic year. I attended due to the fact that the Modern Languages society had been nominated for Academic society of the year.
Being part of the committee as a social secretary has been both rewarding and good fun, which is in part, the reason for the success that we have had this year. I primarily chose to become part of this committee in order to try my hand at organising events in a society of which I already enjoyed being a part of. Furthermore I knew that it would be an ideal chance to enhance my team working skills.  I have worked alongside like-minded hard-working committee members and under the leadership of a dedicated president. Our common goal was to create enjoyable academic and social events for our members, in particular a formal Summer Ball, so that we could be nominated for a Society award.

In order to achieve this goal we each worked on projects or certain aspects of an event independently to utilise our time well. However we also came together to work as a team, offering a wide variety of knowledge and mutual support to each other. For example when we planned the Summer Ball together, we each had certain tasks to organise and then we would report back to the committee to make a final decision. I researched venues, pricing and menus, collecting together a selection of possibilities to put to the committee vote. This meant that everyone was involved and it was voted on fairly. We also worked together on table decorations, selling tickets and preparing the venue on the day. Working in a team did not mean that there was always somebody to rely upon should somebody not be pulling their weight, but rather that everything ran more efficiently because everybody was ready to work together.

As well as being able to balance independent and team work, this developed my awareness of  balancing planning and organisation with flexibility; often certain things could not be planned for (such as numbers of people attending events or in the case of the Ball, last minute drop outs) and therefore I would have to be ready to adapt to the situation to ensure it still ran smoothly.

I believe I have since been able to call upon these honed team work sills in my part time job, as I now have a better knowledge of when independent work or supporting a colleague may be necessary. Being part of the UoL Modern Languages committee has been an experience that I have gained an awful lot from and I learnt that by enjoying what I was doing meant that I got a lot more out of it that if I didn't.

All of our work paid off as we won the award, the second time in the society's short 4 year history. I am proud to say that I was part of such a wonderful society.

(From left to right) Me, a publicity secretary, the president and the vice president with the award.