Connecting education and students to Kraket

Hey, I am Maarten and I hold the position of Internal and Educational Affairs Officer in the 52nd board of Kraket this year. In this article, I'll walk you through a typical week in my life as a board member. As the Internal Affairs Officer, my primary responsibilities include maintaining contact with our members and forming all our committees. Simultaneously, in my role as the Educational Affairs Officer, I am the main contact person for all students regarding study-related questions and remarks. Through this role, my goal is to ensure that the study program meets expectations and remains enjoyable for everyone. When a course does not meet expectations it is my task to get in contact with the program director and explain what is currently wrong with the course and how we can improve it.

Monday

The first day of the week, I arrived at the VU at 11 o’clock, which is a bit later than usual, as I decided to take some extra rest following our return from the ski trip the day before. My typical week begins with creating an overview of all the tasks I plan to do this week, prioritizing them based on how important they are. A key focus this week is on forming new committees, a crucial responsibility as these committees play an important role in organizing numerous events for Kraket. At 13:00 I had my first meeting, which was with the gala committee. We walked through the script of the evening once more, since the gala is Wednesday already, and I answered the last questions that people had regarding the gala. Immediately after that I hopped into our weekly board meeting, which continued until 5 o’clock. Once the meeting ended, it was time for me to grab my stuff and wrap up my day at the university.

Tuesday

My day consisted of 3 different committee meetings, a common occurrence given my role as the supervisor for most committees. To begin, I had the happy hour meeting where we focused on planning for the upcoming beercantus and our EGW, Ectrie Goes Wild. We needed to make a plan for these activities. Further meetings were with the first year and electoral committee. With the electoral committee we are already busy with the promotion for the upcoming selection of the next board. In a few months, we will have the important responsibility of selecting board 53. In the afternoon, I ended my workday earlier than usual as I headed home to provide mathematics tutoring.

Wednesday

Today I had an important meeting with a VU representative regarding the 2024 bachelor introduction days. While it might seem early to discuss an event that is still months away, the planning for this 5-day introduction week involves many details. We have already initiated the planning process this year to ensure a well-organized and successful event. For the rest of the day I had small committee meetings and started planning some of our Kraket events. At 19:00, we attended our gala dinner. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay for the entire dinner as I had to leave early to our gala location, as I was one of the organizers of the event. We started decorating the club at which the gala was held and turned it into a beautiful winter wonderland club. The gala officially started at 22:00, and turned out to be a great event that continued until 3:00.

Thursday

My Thursdays are always quite relaxing. I have to be in the Kraket room from 10:00-17:00. Each board member has 1 full day that they have to be present in the Kraket room and Thursday is my day to be in the room. I dedicated this day to finalizing the formation of all the committees. This task can be challenging at times because there are not always enough committee applications. However, by the end of the day, I successfully filled all the committees, leaving me with a happy feeling as I headed home.

Friday

I started my day with a meeting of the educational committee; this committee provides me with feedback from all the bachelor courses. All this feedback is presented in a meeting with Eric Beutner. In the afternoon, I had a meeting with Eric Beutner, the program director of the bachelor in Econometrics. During such meetings, I provide him with all the feedback I have collected concerning education. He in turn provides me with answers or presents arguments regarding the feedback. If he is not able to answer my questions he tells me who I need to contact to get the feedback to the right person(s). I ended the day with dinner with the electoral committee. Every committee can have one dinner, on Kraket’s cost, to get to know eachother better. This was a nice way to end the work week.

Weekend

During the weekend, my involvement in Kraket related tasks is minimal. I dedicate about an hour each day to respond to all the Kraket related texts that I receive. Aside from that, my weekends are mostly to hangout with friends and to take a break from the work I have done during the week.

I hope this article gives you a good description of my week as a board member! If you have any questions, you can always contact me or visit the Kraketroom.