Author: Sophie van Hest
Date: 15-02-2023

On September 6th, I was officially voted in as the Vice-Chairman/Secretary of Asset | Economics. Since then I had the opportunity to develop myself, my work and last but not least have a lot of fun. In this blog I want to share more about my first half year as a board member of Asset | Economics with you. 

First I will give you a quick introduction of myself. My name is Sophie van Hest and I am 20 years old. I grew up in Udenhout, a small village near Tilburg. I started with the bachelor Economics and Business Economics 2,5 years ago. In the TOP-week I was introduced to Asset and I decided to become active. In my first year I was part of the Freshmen Committee where I had a lot of fun, while also getting to know what being active was all about. In my second year I was part of the Activities Committee, where I organised different events for active members. What I always really liked about being active is, of course, the fun activities, but also just the feeling of being part of one close group of friends. 

As a Vice-Chairman your main tasks are the contact with members and the promotion of all things related to Asset | Economics. These tasks begin at the start of the summer when you have an active member talk with all (potential) active members of the association. I enjoyed these talks quite a lot as I could get to know members better, and they could get to know me better. This is important as I am the first person of the board members to reach out to in case of questions and remarks. The second main task of a Vice-Chairman is the promotion of all things related to Asset | Economics. This includes maintaining the social media of Asset | Economics, but also bringing in new active members and promoting our three pillars.

You also take a place in the Public Relations meeting. This is a meeting with the Vice-Chairman of all departments and the Public Relations officer. Within this organ, I am a part of the Designer team and I organise the ABA (All Boardies Activity). As part of the designer team I design flyers and banners for promotion. For the ABA you organise a day for all board members of all departments of Asset. For example last ABA we organised a huifkar cantus and went to the karaoke bar after. 

Next to being Vice-Chairman I am also the Secretary of Asset | Economics. The main responsibilities of this function is to keep the website up-to-date, take care of the year planning, the mail of Asset | Economics, writing minutes and other administrative tasks. Most of these tasks are smaller and don’t take up a lot of time, but have to be done to make sure the association runs smoothly. I really like to mix these tasks up with the tasks of the Vice-Chairman function to get more variation in your day. 

As a Secretary you get to take part in the Secretaries Meeting and the Webmaster meeting. In the Secretaries Meeting you sit together with all Secretaries of different departments to discuss overlap in year planning, plan new events and occasionally joke around a bit. The Webmaster meeting consists of all the Webmasters of different departments, most of the time these are the Secretaries, but this differs per department. In the Economics board it also isn’t always the task of the Secretary. In this meeting you discuss how the website can be upgraded, but also some problems people ran into and how to solve them. 

Next to these main tasks I also coordinate multiple committees. I am the coordinator of the Blog committee, Charity committee, Events committee, Freshmen committee, Master committee, Multimedia committee and the Yearbook committee. In a week you have meetings with these different committees to organise events, have good interaction with active members or be consistent in uploading blogs for example. These committees all differ in function and seriousness, so it is a nice variety. It is also fun to speak to all the members when they come by the rooms.  

In the past half year I got a lot of opportunities to develop myself. For example I followed a Trustee Contact Person training, which helped me become a better conversationalist and able to understand people better. I also visited formal events, not only those of Economics, but also some of other departments which helped me better understand what I want to do after my board year. Next to this I also had a lot of fun. On the first floor of the Esplanade building, all the different departments are located, so you see the board members of other departments every day. A habit we have picked up is to have a Tea/Coffee moment once a week together with various boardies. It is mostly for fun to have a small break in between meetings, but at the start of the year it also came in handy to get to know each other better. Now if we need something from another board member we just go to their rooms, instead of messaging each other, because it is quicker but also for fun to have a quick chat. 

Because all your tasks for your function are quite flexible, I also managed to still do something for my study beside my board year. My goal for the first semester was to pass two courses. I managed to do this, because I was very flexible in my tasks and when I did them. Around the exams we have less events, so this period is a bit lower in workload and I planned the things I needed to do ahead so I created some free time to study. This way I was able to pass two courses in my first semester! 

All in all, I am really enjoying my board year so far and am looking forward to the rest of the year. I hope to further develop myself while also making many more amazing memories, which I have no doubt I will. 

Hopefully this article has given you some insight in what it entails to be Vice-Chairman/Secretary of the board of Asset | Economics. If you have any questions or want to know more, do not hesitate to contact me by phone (06-47166672), or by mail: [email protected]