[NYGH Board of Monitors] Planning Class Events

One of the key parts of being the BOM of your class is leading your class in participating in class events that the school has organised, be it level-based, or school-wide based.

One of the more memorable events that I led was the level party that was held at the end of the year to celebrate everyone’s efforts in finishing the End-of-Years (EOYs) as well as give everybody a chance to wind-down. Together with BOMs from other classes, we spent around a month planning for the level party, including planning games, purchasing of food etc.

Eventually the event did turn out really well and everybody had fun, including meeting friends from other classes. I recall being pretty stressed out by the planning of the party because we had quite a tight budget to work with, and yet needed to ensure that everyone was included in terms of the ‘free’ food that comes with every party. After scrolling NTUC a couple of hundred times (obviously exaggerated but it did feel that way at that point in time), and dividing the budget by the total population attending the party, I did manage to plan everything out to ensure everyone gets at least a packet of snacks and a drink packet.

However, things were easier planned than done. We somehow grossly underestimated the number of people needed to carry all the purchased snacks from the nearest NTUC to school. Apart from that, my naïve self believed that I’d be able to waltz into NTUC and ask them for 200 packets of green tea, 50 large packets of cheezels, and another 100 packets of roller coasters (not the exact figures, but to a similar extent). Evidently, things did not work out well and we had to make quite a lot of changes on the spot (yay adaptability!), including swopping out some snacks for others when they were not available. Bringing everything back to the school proved to be another challenge, but we did manage to carry everything back at one go (25 plastic bags that took up all the space in the public bus - thankfully the bus was empty) Obviously we received quite a bit of judgemental stares, but I’m just glad that it worked out well. Of course, on the way back to school, we also received a lot of help from passers-by who advised us to stack multiple plastic bags to prevent breakage, which was really heart-warming.

There were a few learning points from the above experience, including being open to changes in plans, and being okay knowing that not everything will go according to plan. It is pretty much impossible for things to stick exactly to what’s written in black and white, especially when you can’t control every single factor involved. So, being able to think of a plan B quickly is extremely important, since it doesn’t matter how the job gets done (provided you do not do it illegally), but instead it matters more that the job gets done.

Next, it’s always better to be over-prepared than under-prepared. Instead of struggling with only 5 people to carry 300 people’s worth of food back to school, it would have been a lot more practical to ask perhaps 5 other people to join us and help us. That would have prevented a lot of unnecessary stress and trouble placed on those who helped out with carrying the items.