A board year as Secretary at Asset | Accounting & Finance – Lars van Maris

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As secretary, my responsibilities include taking minutes at meetings, the association’s incoming and outgoing communications and annual planning. In addition, I have organized the Audit Activity and coordinate the StudyTour and Faces Online committees. In this article I share how I have experienced my year as secretary of Asset | Accounting & Finance so far, what challenges I still see for my final months and why I made the decision to do a board year last year! 

Who am I? 

I am Lars van Maris, 21 years old and currently a 4th year Bachelor Economics & Business Economics student. In my free time I like to play field hockey, or sit outside somewhere quiet to read. After I finished my VWO in Eindhoven, Tilburg seemed like a nice city to study, and when I found a room in Tilburg 2 weeks before TOP-week I started to build my own place.

My choice for Asset | Accounting & Finance

During TOP week, like many before me, I walked past the tables of Asset and then joined them. Unlike others in my TOP group, I did not then become active in a department. I did join Vidar then, and it is here that I met someone who later told me about the Accounting & Finance Department. Besides planning to study Finance myself after my bachelor’s, the activities and events I heard about also seemed very nice to me, so then I contacted the then Vice-Chairman to become active.

The reason I finally decided to put myself in as secretary for a year

When I started college, I already knew that I would not or did not want to run nominally with my studies. Your student time is a period in your life where you can learn so much that I knew very quickly that I wanted to make the most of it. Besides, it also looks very good on your resume if you have done some things besides your studies. So from year one I became active at Vidar and SHOT, and about two years later also at Asset | Accounting & Finance. Within Vidar and SHOT I had already come into contact with people who did or had done a year in those associations, and after talking to them about this I thought it would be a very valuable addition to my time as a student. As I learned more about what each position does within A&F and talked to then directors about serving on boards in general, it quickly became clear to me that the secretary position would suit me best. This is where my orderliness really comes into its own and where I can learn the most from everyone else. 

“What do you do as Secretary on the Board and why are you always so busy?”

As Secretary, of course you have the classic tasks such as taking minutes of the meetings and managing incoming and outgoing communication via email, for example. In addition, as Secretary I am responsible for 2 committees, namely the StudyTour committee and the Faces Online Committee. Also, together with our Vice-chairman Julia, I am currently responsible for maintaining our website and the events and activities we have on it. Other than that, I don’t really have very big tasks anymore, but so this does mean that I have the time to take on some more of the smaller tasks that are left between us from time to time. I also continue to play field hockey actively at SHOT during my board year and I still have to work quite often on the weekends. This all together ensures that I generally have a nice full schedule.

“So what kind of ‘smaller’ tasks do you have?”

One of the most common smaller tasks on the board in designing promotion and social media. For this we generally use the design programs Indesign or Canva. Throughout the year, I have used these to create promotional materials for such events as the StudyTour, Faces Online, and several other events and activities. I also occasionally take over other small tasks from other board members when they don’t have time for this, such as drafting a message for our group app or an email. I also sometimes went with the externs to the meetings with our partners during the summer to support them here and take notes of the discussions. Picking up all these small tasks gave me the opportunity to learn a lot of new things and to be able to watch and learn from many different aspects of our board.

“I wouldn’t have missed this for anything and I have absolutely no regrets about my choice.”

Faces Online was in the beginning a task I often spent all morning with on Wednesdays but over the months I have learned to handle this much faster and more agile and learned a lot about and from this. As Secretary, I am also responsible for the StudyTour, and although this is one of the busiest and largest committees in all of A&F, I am very happy that it falls under my position. The committee is great to work with and the satisfaction that will soon be there when we have successfully put on and completed this event is something that makes all that effort more than worth it. In addition, I have had the opportunity to attend events and activities that you can hardly find anywhere else and partly through the events and activities I have been able to greatly expand my network.

“What moments will you never forget from your board year?”

The first moments that will stay with me forever are the night I was told who I was going to form a board with, and the first board weekend we all went to. On both occasions I got to know the rest of my board better than the entire time before that in which I already knew them. On the weekend we did so many fun things and made so many memories that I will never forget.

Another moment I will never forget is the first really big discussion we had as a board. Opinions were fairly divided then and tempers ran pretty high, but in the end we came to a conclusion together and for me this has been one of the most instructive moments so far.

In addition, of course, all our events and activities have left me with wonderful memories that I hope will stay with me for years to come.

What have I learned during my year on the board?

During a board year you learn a lot, and one of the things I often say is that a board year is one of the best ways to get to know yourself. You get into so many situations during your board year that you haven’t experienced before that you learn a lot about yourself and how you as a person react and deal with such a situation. In the busy weeks you find out how to deal with stress, in the quiet weeks you learn how to take the initiative to take on other tasks that you normally wouldn’t get around to.

I learned a lot about how to work more efficiently and how to organize and use my time better. I also learned how to handle discussions better and to put aside my own opinion now and then for the common good of the association. In addition, I have learned a lot, and am still learning more, about working with the rest of my board and how we can improve it.

What am I still looking forward to?

I am very much looking forward to the StudyTour. As coordinator I have been working on the organization and set-up of this since the beginning of the year, so once this is all finalized and settled and we are in Brazil I can look back on almost a whole year of effort, effort and achievement to put together such a great trip. Of course I am also very much looking forward to all the activities with our members that are still planned, because those members are ultimately the people you do all this for and the bond you build with them throughout the year is irreplaceable.

Do you recommend a board year?

This is the easiest question of this article, which is yes! Like everything else in life, a board year has its ups and downs but the experiences you gain, the events and activities you get to organize and attend, the network you build and the opportunities that come from this, all the things you learn from it, and most importantly the bond you build here with both your fellow board members and your members is irreplaceable and worth all the effort.