As a shy Sophomore in college, I joined the student organization Women in Business. I enjoyed meeting new students in my college who weren’t in my major and listening to speeches from women who pursued entrepreneurship and fields similar to my own.
By the end of the Fall semester, one of the officers announced that they were looking to fill the position of secretary. I jumped at the chance to submit my application for the role excited to contribute to the club. My sheer eagerness and enthusiasm, plus being one of two applicants secured me the position.
At the first meeting of the Spring semester, I sit down at a large conference table in a study room with 6 other young women. After about 5 minutes of president Micheala speaking they all begin to stare at me. The club treasurer Courtney finally speaks up and says “Haley, are you going to start writing the minutes, it’s very important that we get an overview of this meeting.”
Flustered, I mumble “of course!” and fumble with my backpack to retrieve my ratty red “Intro to Accounting” notebook and chewed-up Bic pen. Instantly, I’m writing down every talking point like a courtroom transcriber -“ Courtney says attendance seems pretty low for a kick-off meeting. Michaela said that it’s universally normal for student club kick-off meetings to be lower in the Spring compared to the Fall. Janea says that we should be focusing on marketing efforts more than ever to bring in more members.”
As the meeting goes on, my hand begins to cramp from trying to keep up with the discussion, but I focus through the pain because I can’t let down my new team. The officers begin to talk about new events and plans that I have no concept of. I could ask them to explain what Mother and Daughter Day is or why it’s so hard to get funding from the school, but I think I’ll just get in the way of discussion so I remain silent.
After the meeting, Courtney asks when I plan on sending the team the minutes via email. She needs them as proof tomorrow for when she transfers the club’s money to a bank with fewer fees. “I’ll have them sent tonight of course”, I say with a smile failing to conceal my lack of knowledge. If Courtney didn’t say anything, I’d definitely not know that the secretary is supposed to mass email the minutes to the team after the meetings.
Late at night while typing up my bloated minutes (really a transcript), I begin to think maybe these minutes aren’t it. Maybe a word-to-word retelling of a meeting isn’t useful to anyone or maybe I’m just too lazy to retype it all out. So I type out bite-sized summaries of the conversations in my original minutes and click send on the email.
No one says anything about my minutes, so I assume that they must be pretty decent. As the semester goes on, I’m still as confused and quiet as I was at that first meeting. The rest of the officers know each other pretty well, so I feel like the slightly younger interloper. This may be an unwarranted feeling since they’re all extremely nice and considerate to me.
By the time the semester is nearly over, I finally have an understanding of all the WIB events and how they’re run. I finally looked up how to write actual minutes (which turned out I wasn’t far off with the conversational bite-size summaries) and my minutes were reading better and better with every meeting.
The rest of the officers were graduating so I’d be the remaining officer left on the WIB team. Michaela asks me what I want to do next semester. I told her I’m sticking with the secretary because I’ve only been in the role for one semester and I’m finally pretty decent at it.
To summarize why I was a bad student secretary:
- I never looked up how to perform the duties of a secretary
- I had the brief understanding that secretaries took minutes at meetings but I didn’t know how to write them and I didn’t know what their purpose was for. When I just winged it and no one said anything, I just took that as I must be doing things right. Looking back on this, I can’t believe the audacity I had to not look up anything on the position.
- My mindset was that I was an outsider/low-status member of the team
- Since all the rest of the team knew each other, knew what they were doing, and knew club information that I didn’t, I made myself think I was a lower-status member who was just getting in the way. My mindset should have been, I get a chance to figure out how this club operates and get to help make decisions that greatly impact the club. My role was bigger than I originally thought.
- When I didn’t know something, I didn’t ask for help or clarification
- You could say that the other officers never caught me up on the position to be on the same level as the rest of the team. Maybe they assumed that I knew more about my position and the club than I did. But honestly, I had a chance to speak up and ask for more clarification about my role, tasks, and club plans, but I didn’t and I didn’t because I lacked confidence and made up my mind that my role and character didn’t matter.
Act 2: I broke out of my shell
The next Fall semester, we elected a whole new team of officers and an interesting thing happened. I became the most knowledgeable officer and the new officers looked to me for advice.
This invigorated something in me. I started thinking critically about last semester, thinking about what members liked and didn’t like, what I liked and didn’t like, and I started proposing new ideas. The new officers loved the discourse of brainstorming new and fun ideas. They also have garnered varied opinions about the club from being long-term members themselves.
Due to my last semester of being a not-so-great secretary, I was able to be more empathetic towards the new officers – officers who didn’t know quite what they were supposed to be doing. I encourage them to research their role and to get excited about expressing their ideas and giving their opinions in meetings.
My role started becoming more consultative based on my experience working with the past successful team of student officers. Writing minutes became super easy, so I started looking for new projects within WIB. Since my major was Management of Information Systems, I thought it would be cool to develop the club’s website and eCommerce platform since it aligned with what I wanted to do.
The rest of the team agreed that it would be excellent to have a website with a way for members to pay their dues and merchandise online. I even did a complete rebranding of our logo and club colors.
By the next Spring semester, I decided to run for Vice President of AITP (Association of Information Technology Professionals) and got elected. While not being as involved in WIB as previously, I still attended officer meetings to act as a mentor to new officers.
A couple of years later, I was talking to my friend, Oliva, who was the marketing officer of WIB while I was secretary during my second semester as an officer. She got elected president of WIB after that semester. We were reflecting on our experiences in college and I mentioned something about my secretary role.
She was genuinely surprised I was the secretary during that semester. She said, ”I don’t remember what I thought your role was at the time, but I thought it was something much higher up than a secretary.”
When I thought about it, once you’re an officer – secretary or president or any other role for that matter – your vote, ideas, and opinion matter just as much as any other officer on that team.
For my first semester, my mindset and confidence held me back from seeing that, but once I figured that out, I had a lot of fun meeting new people and helping to organize fun events on campus.
Join the Conversation
Does anyone else have a similar experience as me? Did my growth and self-reflections inspire you to ask questions, try new things, and speak up during meetings. Tell us your stories in the comments.
- I didn’t know how to write meeting minutes
- I didn’t know much about what was being discussed
- I didn’t have the knowledge of the position
- No supplied the know but I didn’t exactly reach out to change that
- My mindset as the outsider (made my mind up as being a low-status individual)
What changed: getting my act together – (Most People want to do a good job)
- I knew the most
- I also researched how to write minutes & agendas and got better at writing minutes & agendas
- I became more confident
- Was able to be empathetic towards new officers
