The Albion Board pt 2: Aisha – Commissioner of External Affairs

Since I started the course in September 2010, Albion has played a part in my college experience. Especially in my first year, I was a frequent visitor of the Albion drinks and parties, and in my second year I joined Phoenix (now Phoenicia), which was then still published as a magazine. I also became a mentor in the introduction week, after which I joined the Introduction committee in April 2012.

When the last Albion board was looking for new members, I had just made the decision to enroll in the master Intercultural Communication after my BA and I thought that applying for commissioner of external affairs would be a great way to gain some experience in the field of communication. I did have some doubts, because it was really important for me to graduate in three years (with reasonable grades) and being a member of the board takes up quite some time. Also, while Albion as a student organization of Humanities is quite big, I was told that finding sponsors is difficult, as a lot of companies don’t necessarily want to attract English majors.

Still,I took the dive, and I’m very glad I did. The first period as a board member revolves around getting adjusted to… well almost everything really. As a commissioner of external affairs, you basically keep in contact with not only other organizations, but also the Albion members. Our secretary writes the updates, but another way of communicating quickly with members is via Facebook, as I do. With the help of a friend of mine I also made a new website, which is not perfect because I’m not an expert in web-development, but it is there nonetheless. I also tried to figure out what the best way was to lure sponsors into the claws of Albion, by sending a lot of e-mails to companies and organizations (also called spamming). Throughout the year, you also have to keep in contact with the sponsors you have, because most of them are worth keeping another year.

I was a bit insecure at first because I’m a perfectionist (a very chaotic one) and very harsh on myself. But it is now, in the second half of the year that I have started to become more comfortable in my role as board member of Albion. This is because things are running quite smoothly (I’ve finally bought a daily planner and I actually use it!), but also because there’s a lot of room for me to be creative and come up with new things for Albion.

Like the others, I hope to get a closer relationship with The English Department this year, or at least lay out some groundwork. We all think there are still so many opportunities for Albion and we are destined to make use of all of them to let Albion thrive. Of course, we hope the next board will continue to work for Albion with a lot of enthusiasm and passion!

If you have any questions on becoming the next commissioner of external affairs, or questions about the Albion board in general, you are very welcome to visit my office hours to talk about it with tea and cookies (or send me an e-mail: bestuur@albionutrecht.nl).

Love,

Aisha