My Tenure as Cultural Secretary

Every high school has leadership opportunities for students to help shape them for greater positions in life. They are chosen after careful consideration by the faculty and Principal, who have watched us grow over the years. The students who hold these coveted positions (you will know why as you continue to read) are a part of the board of prefects and have various duties assigned to them. In Grade 11 you are in an Assistant position and take over as the Secretary towards the end of Grade 11, as the Grade 12 students start working on their Board exams.

I was anxiously waiting for the day the prefects selection would be announced as I started Grade 11. I still remember hearing my name being called from a list to meet the Principal during an afternoon English period. When I was told that I was chosen for the post of Cultural Secretary, my joy knew no bounds. I had always wanted to hold this post and it was a dream come true for me. 

So, who is a Cultural Secretary and what do they do? Inter - school cultural competitions hosted under a banner by a school is famously known as culturals among high school students. My main responsibility was to lead the school team to various culturals (I know this word doesn't belong to the dictionary, but the word by itself gives a unique feeling), and to help conduct my own school's culturals. 

As a Cultural Secretary, on a daily basis, we had to help with the assembly. We had to make sure there were students from allotted grades to say the prayer and that there was a prefect ready to say the Monday morning pledge. We made all the announcements to be brought to the students' attention as well as various prizes the students won, as the Principal distributed them.

We made sure that the students were dressed appropriately as per school guideline. If not, we had to catch them and send them to the responsible teacher. It was fun to pull out students of our grade as they pleaded with us to be excused one last time! This was the daily morning routine for almost two years. 

Along with my co - prefects, I also helped monitor school events such as sports day, project day, school annual day, house activities and so on.

The more fun part was going to other school culturals to check out the schools, miss school, meet and make new friends (and in my case take a break from curd rice as well :). Hence, there was great competition among students to attend as many culturals and participate in as many events as possible. 

Unfortunately, we always received the invites for the culturals maybe a week in advance. A lot of events were group based and hence teams had to be decided in a jiffy and within a days notice I had to find unbiased people to conduct auditions, resolve fights, hear people out and make the selections.

If arriving at a rough draft of participants was chaotic, finalizing the participants (with correct spelling name of students, managing sudden switches and dropouts) was a different ball game! I sacrificed many lunches because I was the 'thayir sadam' girl with an 'adukku tiffin carrier'. I couldn't even afford to carry my lunch box around and eat during the breaks :(. We made the list of participants event wise to use for the registration and class wise for the teachers to know who would miss school on various spreadsheets. We then ran around getting the papers signed, one of us emailing the registration and the other going around and posting the lists on all the notice boards. All left then was for us to wait patiently to attend the culturals in a day or two.

Amidst all this, I couldn't resist participating, so I had to squeeze in time for late evening rehearsals in addition to regular school work like records, homework and tests. Though taxing and requiring a lot of planning, I knew this was an opportunity that I did not want to miss. 

This position has taught me a few things:

• Time management: Every day was packed with classes and studies, but I always managed to get done with what I had to. I do agree I didn't have time to watch TV or chat with a friend for hours but I don't think it was necessary. I always submitted homework or assignments on time, scored decent in my tests and exams. Even during school hours this was helpful. Most days I did not eat my lunch when I had to, but I did manage to eat it some time, never bringing it back home (Scolding Mom here :).

• Working with people: Another great learning experience was being part of the team that conducted my school's own culturals - Reflections. I learnt how to work as a team, brainstorm together, give ideas, accept that all of them won't be taken and that others will have better ideas than I do. There were so many things that went into conducting this event - creating registration forms, designing invites, coming up with interesting events, making posters, collecting materials for each event to name a few. All of this together was a unique way to learn how to work in groups and not singularly.

• Communication skills: Leading a team to victory involves a lot of communication. I learnt to convey what I wanted to, keeping in mind not to sound too harsh yet make my point clear. It was hard for me as I am very direct and frank person, but I did slowly learn to deal with various kinds of people. 

I was also appreciated for a few of my traits, which made it all worthwhile! I am very meticulous and a perfectionist. I was always allotted work by my teachers in complete faith that it would be done well with utmost attention and submitted on or before it was due. I also never used my being a prefect as an excuse for gaining time on my regular school work. If I missed school on Friday and had a submission on Monday it would be done by then. A lot of my teachers and friends were also very impressed on how I balanced all my extra - curricular activities, like my bharatanatyam and carnatic music, learning and practice (which I am very passionate about), along with my studies and duties at school.

On the victory front, we won Scintillations 2019, Kalanjali 2019, Reverberations 2019, Smaraneeyam 2018 and Sishyamrita 2018.

 

The above is in short what I did and learnt over the course of two years as Cultural Secretary. I feel very fortunate for having been chosen to hold this post and I hope I met or exceeded the expectations of my Principal and Faculty as an Ambassador of the School. Personally, I am extremely grateful for the opportunity. I am very satisfied with my work and have no regrets.