FIRST THINGS FIRST
Grad school can be incredibly overwhelming to navigate – even more so when we’re juggling all of it and everyday complexities of living and surviving in a time of extraordinary crisis with the work we try to do in NUS GSS.
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As a community organizer, I am all too familiar about the risk of burning out in the course of keeping pace with our work.
We often burn out when we lose sight of the purpose and
intentionality of why we’re doing what we’re doing, and end up
simply chasing task after task for the sake of doing them.
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Our NUS GSS cannot become merely another committee preoccupied solely with work at the expense of our well-being.
We’ve got to care for one another first.
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That’s how we can cari on together.
Each candidate brings our own visions to the table when running for our respective positions in the NUS GSS EXCO. As your vice-presidential candidate, my goal is not to dictate the specific visions or plans of each EXCO Cell or project.
There is space for all our visions and passions
within the broader purpose of our NUS GSS.
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I hope to co-lead our NUS GSS EXCO to become
a more intentional community that consciously
makes space for and affirms one another.
SUCCESSION
Photo credit: climbing Kota Tinggi Waterfall with fellow participants at NUSSU Student Leaders’ Camp 2019. It takes an entire community in order to move an entire community from Point A to Point B safely. Leadership succession is all about ensuring that if any of us is down, the rest will be there with us. (📸: James Hii Photography)
Even as I lead in my own way, I am mindful that any movement must be bigger than any single person or group of leaders and must be able to outlive and outlast them.
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That is why if elected, I’m starting my term by putting this principle into practice as my first order of business as Vice-President-elect of our 35th NUS GSS.
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In Students for a Safer NUS and QueerNUS, the two organizations I lead with today, I have always made it a point to focus on building up every member as leaders in their own right and regard, so that any of us can stand in for each other any time.
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I have made movement-wide leadership succession through broadening our base of leaders and deepening their firsthand experience with organizing a top priority from the start of my terms there. The renewal process has been ongoing for months, and
I intend to hand over both roles to a new cohort of leaders by December 2020.
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In my NUS GSS vice-presidential term, I will likewise make it a priority to prepare for succession starting on Day 1 – by growing as leaders with our communities both inside and outside GSS.
THE BIGGER PURPOSE
