To failure

I am also astonished at how have I ended up here, on a conference organized by the Student Action for Refugees. The last thing I can remember is me, volunteering in March to be a volunteering coordinator in our Warwick branch.  What follows is a farrago of 135 e-mails, writing a grant, 11 meetings, crazy organisation of a stall on Freshers Fair and Volunteering Fair, setting up a blog, setting up a Twitter, maintaining both of them, surprising midnight phone calls from people seeking help with filling out their applications for CRB checks, protesting  against detention in front of Campsfield Detention Centre, exhausting ESOL classes in local refugee centre, and finally a sleepy ride at 6am to the conference.

And out of the blue, I am standing in front of an audience of over  50 people and standing for a member of the board of trustees. Well, few days ago I asked  what it was about and that was apparently misread as interest, resulting in me being thrown into the deep end. 

I am nervous and my voice is shaking. Finally I hope I have expressed myself – Warwick STAR has helped me to discover a hidden part of my identity. All of us here are migrants – whether we realise it or not. Therefore we are driven to the Polish shops, slavic societies, therefore we cherish the provient sent from our homes. Discovering the new and unknown is exciting and funny but often exhausting – and it doesn’t matter how long you are here.

Well, I sucked in the elections. However, after a while, few people approached me with an absent-minded face and thanked me. And I appreciate it, as well as I appreciate that the university taught me to shake hands with failure and part in good.  Because sometimes you can crawl under the bed ashamed with  your essay mark or would kick it because a new school journal has not published an article you sweated over. Either you always make it as an internn or never even get a decent job (paid, if you are lucky). It is exhausting, it is frustrating but here you are. However, I do not think we talk about it (or blog about it, for that matter) enough. Failure can actually get the best out of you.*

*Our article about the conference was retweeted by several national organizations supporting refugees and STAR National associating 38 universities still has it as the article of the day. And the Warwick SU famous for being a Scrooge donated a voucher for meal for two to our charity raffle. I know, that’s slightly irrelevant, but I am just proud of it.