December 15, 2004

• I'M PRESIDENT!!!   I'm extremely excited.  Me, Trevor, and Grant all won representative; you guys were great competition, it'll be fun working with you next semester.  When she called me last night, I was breathing so heavy, I couldn't beleive it.  We agreed not to talk about who won until today, otherwise I would have posted last night.  I think most of my votes came from the 7th grade, the 6th grade girls, and a number of the 8th grade girls.  Here was the presidential speech I made; if you heard it, just skip over it.

  
  

  First of all I just want to thank the 8^th grade for giving me this opportunity to be on the student council and run for president, and for all of you for sitting and listening to all three of us bore you for a few minutes during your lunch time.

  
  

   

  
  

  There are a number of specific qualities a president must have.  A president needs to have vision.  Ever since summer, I have pictured in my mind how a student council might work, and when I came back to school, I did my all to implement a plan.  If I had come into this saying I wanted a student council, but not having an idea of how it might run, then we wouldn’t have had a good basis to start on.  If elected, I will bring rough plans for people’s ideas into every meeting, so we have somewhere to start.  If no one starts us off with a plan, we could discuss and argue about how we wanted to pull something off for meeting after meeting and not get anywhere.  I know how we may be able to fix and plan some things, and I think realistically.

  
  

   

  
  

  A president needs to have will, drive, and determination.  No matter what people are saying about how hard something will be to do, or thinking that no one will like an idea, you have to keep at it.  If I had listened to the people who told me that the student council would never happen, that there wasn’t enough student interest, or that we shouldn’t try to get one running this year, because it’s not going to happen, then we wouldn’t be where we are now.  I could have just as easily forgotten about it, but I felt that it was possible, and it was something that could be really good for Nueva, so I kept at it, and now we have our student council elected, and they are all ready to get going.  If I had given up on this at the very beginning stages, no one would have been there to pick it up again.  I have the will and determination to do just about anything.  If someone set me a task, and I was motivated to do it, I would work nonstop on it until I came up with something good.

  
  

   

  
  

  A president needs to have faith.  Faith in ideas that may not sound good at the time, but faith that with work, they can be improved.  You can’t disregard an idea before you give it a shot.  Someone that shoots down ideas right away without hearing the person out or giving it a second thought shouldn’t be president.  I don’t judge people’s ideas by the people suggesting them.  I look at each idea as a plan, rather then looking at the person.  I will listen to every idea with equal interest, I will let people explain their thoughts, and then see what we can work out to make it work.

  
  

   

  
  

  A president needs to have charisma.  When the student council comes up with a plan for something, there will need to be someone to present the idea to a group of teachers or parents, and I can be convincing with that.  I feel completely comfortable talking to adults, so I think that would give the council’s plans a better chance of being approved.  I would be willing to put time and effort into presentations, and if we needed someone to lead an event or dress in a chicken suit, I would be the one to do that.

  
  

   

  
  

  Lastly, a president needs to be able to listen and understand, but also lead.  Listening is very important.  You can’t just do what you want, and forget what everyone else thinks.  However, I wouldn’t spend hours having discussions that lead to arguments that get us nowhere.  That’s where leadership comes in.  You have to know when to stop the discussion, and actually work on compromising to form a plan.  After leading the meetings before the elections, I now know how to facilitate compromises, and I realize that once people have made all their points and start repeating the same ones in other words, it’s time to bring the discussion to a close or an argument will start.  I will do all that I can to be unbiased in suggesting compromises, and just doing everything I can to make the representatives and the student body agree.

  
  

   

  
  

  I am excited about what the student council will be able to cover next semester, with setting up the council for future years, fixing problems people have with some stuff at school like hot lunch, raising money for the student council, and then using that money to plan fun events for the middle school that we have never done here at Nueva before.  This first year of the student council is very important to do right, and I just want you to trust in me to finish what we started together.  I know how to make things work, and I think that the future of the student council might rest a lot on who will lead the council through this whole process.  I believe that I am that person, and I hope you do too.

  
  

  Well, I got through last week... barely.  I stayed after school Tuesday and Wednesday for 2 1/2 hours so I could finish my PowerPoint presentation.  I haven't even presented that yet, I'll probably be like the last to go.  It was fun though, on Tuesday Cecile and Shana was there, and we had a chance to talk, and on Wednesday Andreanna and Marlowe were studying for the science retest, so that was cool.  Thursday was the science retest.  I got a 56 instead of a 36 this time, but still not nearly good enough.  That night we had the bazaar for our humanities culmination.  It was cool, but it dragged on a little.  You don't need 2 1/2 hours to have that.  Now this week we have a ton of self evaluations (Nueva's alternative to grades, we write about ourselves and then the teachers write about us), and I still need to give my oral presentation.

  
  

  Friday night was awesome!  Trevor, John, Char, Brian, Chris, Chris' sister  (that was for you guys), Christian, Grace, Jasper, Arielle, and I all went to see Claire in ACT's Christmas Carol playing Martha Crachit.  It was awesome to see her on stage, she was so good!  Earlier in the day, she got to go see Sean Astin (her favorite actor, he was Sam in Lord of the Rings if you didn't know) do an interview for NBC (and meet him) as a birthday present from her dad.  Speaking of interviews, she was on the news for being in Christmas Carol; they interviewed four kids from it.  Anyway, after the show, we all went with Claire and another one of the kids in the show, Justin, and ate at Max's.  That was really fun to eat with everyone, but the night was still young, so I suggested going bowling.  Surprisingly it happened, and everyone except Arielle and Justin went bowling from midnight until the bowling alley closed at one in the morning.  After that all the guys except for Trevor (wow this paragraph seems like it's Survivor, someone keeps getting knocked off) came to my house for a sleepover.  The next day my dad said Brian was extremely polite (go figure!  Bungho!).

  
  

  After the break, I want to get started really quickly with the student council.  I'll talk to some of the representatives this week to see when they want the meetings to be.  I think we should have some sort of fun event to thank everyone for being a part of this and as a celebration of sorts for getting this process going, but to do that we'll need money.  And we're going to need money anyway, if we ever want to plan any kind of event.  We just have to have some sort of fundraiser that will want to make all of the rich Nueva parents want to donate mucho moolah.  We should also have a talent show I think.  At the first meeting I'm going to suggest having a secretary and see what people think.  We will need someone to take notes during meetings.  If you are on the council, get ready.  We're going to be doing a lot next semester, and it will take commitment.  We'll hopefully have a lot of meetings in January/February to get the ball rolling.  I'm excited about what we'll be able to get done, it'll be good.

  
  

  ~Adam

  • 12:46 am
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