Reporting
Persatuan Mahasiswa Sains Komputer (PERSAKA) is one of the societies in UTM under the supervision of the student affairs department in UTM. PERSAKA is a society for the students of school of computer UTM. It caters all the undergraduate students in the school of computing. Its main purpose is to conduct activities for the good of the students and school of computing. Those who are registered as a student of the school of computing will automatically become a member of PERSAKA. Furthermore, there is a management line where they will be the ones planning and organizing the events. This management line also acts as a bridge between the school of computing and the students even though PERSAKA is under the supervision of the students affair division in UTM.
This management line consists of the high committee and the excos. The high committee are of the president, vice presidents, the secretaries and the treasurers and is normally made out of 7 students. Whereas the excos of the management line consists of 6 exco which are, academics, activities, sponsorship, multimedia, welfare and external affairs. All these excos have their respective responsibilities and the number of students for each exco may vary from each session.
On the 23 April 2019, I was elected to become the general secretary for PERSAKA. I was elected during the annual general meeting of PERSAKA 2019. My tenure was for the 2019/2020 session. My responsibilities was to keep track of all the letters that come and go to PERSAKA, keep track of all the letters made by the committee of each program that PERSAKA organize and lots more. Furthermore, as I was a member of the high committee, I also needed to oversee an exco which was the external affairs exco.
Reasoning
For me the most significant aspect is that it needs a very good time management to cope with academic or in class work load and also with society or club workload. Everyone needs to balance out both aspects in their studies to succeed with what they are doing. If a balance of workload could be achieved, the quality of work that is given by anyone would be very high and very good. With very good time management, I could have done so much more in PERSAKA and conduct programs and events that would be of very high impact and very meaningful to the students.
Another significant aspect of joining this society would be flexibility. There were many situations that needed me to be very flexible. During an ongoing program, many scenarios could happen that were unplanned for. For example, at a formal event or gathering, if one of the emcees could not attend, then we have to fill in for them. Furthermore, I had to be very flexible with my time. There were times when i was busy doing my assignments or studying but i had to attend an ad-hoc meeting regarding a certain program. I learnt how to be flexible with my time as I would leave my work and attend to the more important matters which I will continue completing my work during my free time.
Lastly , I realised that social skills are very important in any situation. Even though I was the general secretary, I had to deal with many people including members of the staff, students and also the public. One of my big responsibilities as mentioned before was that I was in charge of all the letters in the society. Therefore, many of the proposal and permission letters i had to deal with the staff of student affairs UTM. However, I also had to communicate with other organizations, for example mdec and job seek fair since they acquired us to collaborate with them on a program. All these situations have shown me that communication is key and I should be able to communicate fluently with any one.
Responding
The first time I knew I was elected to be the general secretary of PERSAKA, I was really excited because it would be the first time I held such a role in an organisation. I felt that it is a huge responsibility and I felt that PERSAKA is a really big club considering it covers all the students from school of computing.
During my term as the general secretary of PERSAKA, it was a really fun and unforgettable experience. During the 2019/2020 session, there were many ad-hoc events that occurred. Many of the events were collaborations from outside industries such as from Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC). These ad-hoc events that PERSAKA had to handle were not really stressful and more of a challenge i liked. I felt that my time management was good enough that I had ample free time and doing these society work was a really great way for me to socialise with other people and would bring me great benefits.
Subsequently during my tenure, there were certain times when I felt it was really hard and challenging. Some of the programs did not go the way we planned and it was a huge challenge to overcome a few issues during the execution of the program. Many of the problems we faced were because of missed communications among the committee members. I recall this one incident when I conducted a meeting with a whole department to a program. I had to warn the head of department of the time constraints and the pressure of the workload we had to do since everyone was depending on their outcomes. It was the first time in my life I had to be in such a situation where I was the one advicing and informing them of what was at stake.
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Relating
Many of my past experiences during school and pre-university stages in my life had been a good help to me. I was already active and volunteering in conducting events and programs during school and when I was in my pre-university. Therefore most of the problems I faced during my tenure as the general secretary, I could somehow relate with past events that I already faced.
My past experience always taught me that, if any problems that were because of other people could always be resolved by communicating and talking to the person. I used the skills I gained in communicating with people and in empathising with others from their point of view so that I could understand better why the problem is happening. When a person was not being responsible with what their tasks were, we had to confront them to ask what their problems and constraints were.
Reconstructing
This past 1 year of holding the position of the general secretary or PERSAKA, has taught me a lot. Many of the memories and experiences will be my stepping stones into a more wiser and experienced version of myself. In the future, I will get better at my time management. I felt a little scattered-brained because of me adapting to a busier time schedule. If my time management was better when i was the general manager, i feel that all my work outcomes in terms of academics and also my responsibilities to PERSAKA would be better. However, I would not want to change anything I did because all of it was experience teaching me and giving hands on examples of what to do and not to do.
In addition, my communication skills have most significantly improved. I am more confident in talking in front of people at a large or small scale audience. I am now able to communicate with roughly anyone. I am not afraid anymore to approach someone who is in an organization or has to be formally said. Communication is key not just outside of the organization but also in the organization. A simple miscommunication can have bad consequences or create lots of problems. Having good communication skills also represents us or who we are and can really ease every transaction with whomever.
Lastly, I will now be wiser and a better leader. By getting involved with PERSAKA, it has truly made me a better leader. It helped show me how to delegate tasks to people under my leadership and to have faith in them. I can now be better at teamwork and working in a team as compared to before who i would love to do everything myself. Furthermore, with this learning experience, it can be a benefit to the people around me who I will work with in the future. In an organization, everyone will work as a team. Each and everyone will have a responsibility that they will carry out. If a member of our team is not performing well, we should ask them why and not jump to conclusions and just scold them. Therefore, this extracurricular learning experience has taught me so much that no formal education system can ever give. I am truly grateful I joined this extra curricular activity and will not regret anything I did wrong or right as it was a learning curve to me.