Another first time

Wow... I have another first-time experience in my life: being a secretary.

Yup, u heard that right. I become the secretary of a meeting, taking down minutes of what's going on during the meeting. It is actually one of my assignments this semester which is documentation of meetings. And this assignment is to be done in groups of 3 or 4.

I am in the same group with Eugene and Monica. And we're given the topic on Writing in Workplace. We discussed about our roles and it is supposed that Monica will be the secretary while GG and I are the ones presenting on our topic. But, I volunteer myself to be the secretary as I want to get experience of fitting in the shoes of a secretary. Both my group mates accepted my suggestion.

I worked on the memo of the meeting and first sent to Eugene for him to check if there's any problems. He said no problem after reviewing it and gave me the green light to send out the memo to the rest of my coursemates, which I did on the day I received his approval.

Our meeting is held during the Prof Writing lecture and it is a great one. Eugene and Monica present on their respective sections while I take note of the flow of the meeting and take down relevant notes. During the meeting, what I notice is that Eugene, as the President of our company Coveright Surfaces (M) Sdn Bhd, interacts well with the employees by asking them questions. Then he passes the time over to Monica for her section, followed by Q & A session. Meeting's over when there are no more questions from the floor.

(By the way, Eugene isn't the one who comes out of the name of our company, I do. He says it doesn't matter anyway, so I just simply choose one name for our company since I'm sending out the memo to my fellow classmates few days before the meeting.)

It is indeed a great experience for myself taking on the role of a secretary for the first time in my life. I don't have the chance to be appointed to the post in any of the clubs and socieities that I've joined both in secondary schools and also here in Utar. Since this is a golden opportunity, I just grab it and get some experience.

And no doubt, the post of a secretary is usually taken up by females. But this is not true all the time. Imagine a society or club which have only members of the male gender, who's gonna be the secretary in this case? Take for examples, the societies or clubs in my alma mater SMJK Sam Tet which is a school for boys. Girls can be spotted around the school but with only a small number of students. If that's the case, who's gonna be secretaries in situations like this? There aren't no girls to fit in those roles in this case (if you leave out those pursuing Form 6 in the school). So boys have to step in to take up the challenges.

Well, as for my case, I don't really have to be one cause Monica is in our group and she can handle that. But I dare to be different by choosing to be the secretary to break the chain of having all females as secretaries for this assignment as the rest of the groups are all females except ours. Another reason is that I find Monica is better at talking than writing while I'm the other way around. She managed to speak well in all her previous presentations as far as I notice, whereas for myself, sometimes I tend to get stuck when I'm unable to find the right words to get the meassge across. But if I'm well-prepared, I wouldn't face such a problem in most cases. As for writing, Monica's language is quite understandable but she needs to improve on her language as sometimes I don't really get the meaning of what she's writing. As for myself, I find that my language skills and vocabulary is quite good (not boasting here). So I think it's better for me to use my advantage to the fullest in this situation.