I'd say I was pretty involved during my undergraduate years at the University of Illinois. However, there was one area where I wasn't, which was student government. However, that all changed here at Stanford! A few months ago, while I was taking a break from studying, I saw an email from the Stanford elections commission, telling graduate students to "apply now!" to be on Stanford's Graduate Student Council. I almost closed the page, but then I was like, "meh, if I close this window now I'll probably just waste more time on Facebook anyways. It's not like I'm wasting time by filling this out..." So I filled out the application, wrote a brief (and somewhat BS paragraph) about what I wanted to do on the GSC, and didn't give it any more thought.
Well, turns out there were only 16 graduate students who were competing for 14 spots on the GSC, and I suppose I was lucky enough to be one of the 14 who were elected to be on the GSC. At the time, I really had no idea what I had gotten myself into. I didn't really even know what the GSC did, other than that they threw pretty big parties and planned other events for the graduate students here at Stanford. All that changed quickly with the transition meetings with the old GSC, where we learned all about what student government is (supposed to be) about.
While the general election only elected people onto the GSC, the GSC held an internal election afterward to determine the new leadership team of the GSC, namely the chairs that would help guide the GSC. Here was where things began getting more intense. The initial front-runners for the chair positions had a falling-out a couple of days before the internal election, so another GSC member tapped me to run with him as co-chairs. We did, and managed to win the internal election! So now I am one of the co-chairs of the new GSC!
So far it has been an exhilarating ride. I've had a blast learning about the inner workings of the university, and I am very excited to be able to work at making a difference to the students!
That's it for now!
-FCDH
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