Last Wednesday I was nominated for a position in SLATSA, my program’s student association. I don’t know who nominated me or why, but it was a flattering surprise. The position mostly involved fundraising and writing grant proposal which not only do I have zero experience in, but they don’t seem very fun either. I emailed the SLATSA president and told him that I didn’t think I was the ideal candidate due to my lack of experience, but he told me to accept the nomination anyway. So I did, but mostly because I don’t have a job and I need some way to support Thai food eating habit.
Now that I was nominated I just had to win the election to get the position. On Thursday I got the same email that everyone in my program received telling us how to vote. The voting process involved six steps (including making a login name and password) and I wasn’t feeling up to the complicated voting procedure at the time so I put the email in my procrastination file (that means that I starred it for later).
On Friday mornings I have a three hour long class with all the first years in my program. We have a break in the middle of class that usually involves cookies. As soon as the break started I stood up and exclaimed, “I love cookies so much!” as I walked to the cookie table. While chomping down on my second or third cookie Hope walked up to me and said, “So I guess this is where we both wish each other luck on the election.” I said, “Oh, you’re running, too?” (I would have figured that out if I had already voted). We chatted briefly about the position and it turns out that she didn’t feel super-qualified for it either.
One of my friends in the class overheard my conversation with Hope and asked me why I was applying for the position. I said, “I just need a way to earn some money,” to which he replied, “You do realize that it isn’t a paid job?” No, actually, I hadn’t realized that. You see, there was a different position on a different student council that was paid and I had gotten the two mixed up and had somehow agreed to do something that I didn’t want to do for free (and I wasn’t really that thrilled to do it for $12 an hour either). I allowed myself to briefly feel like an idiot.
Newly infused with the power of three cookies and worried that I might have to do extra work for free, I came up with a plan to not win the election. In all honesty, I probably didn’t need a plan because Hope is a phenomenal student and well liked by everyone and probably would have won anyway, but I came up with a plan nonetheless. Hope was now my only hope of getting out of doing more work for zero dollars. Our program isn’t super-big and considering the cumbersome voting process I assumed that few people would vote. This meant that not winning would be easy. Instead of giving my full attention to the lecture I took a few minutes to vote for Hope and then emailed Josh and told him to vote for Hope, too, which he did. I assumed (and hoped) that those two votes would be enough to lose. Later that night I received the following the email: “CONGRATULATIONS to HOPE for winning the position and thank you all for your support and participation." I was relieved, very relieved. And plus, Hope will do a great job and it will look great on her resume and I can spend more time watching House Hunters International. There was Hope for me. Indeed, there is Hope for us all.
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