myOtaku.com: Nikorasu

myO Still <3's You

Vitals

Birthday
• 1986-04-15
Gender
• Male
Location
• Tennessee
Member Since
• 2004-01-11
Occupation
• college student / anime club pres / MTAC staff / sentai member
Real Name
• Nicholas

Personal

Achievements
• Surviving my valedictorian speech, joining the MTSU Anime Club
Anime Fan Since
• 1998
Favorite Anime
• Genshiken, Trigun, Please Teacher!, Yakitate!! Japan, Gurren Lagann, most Gundam I've seen that don't have SEED in the title
Hobbies
• anime, comics, internets, games, giant robots, sleep

myOtaku.com: Nikorasu

Sunday, December 16, 2007

End-of-semester reflection, pt 1

The end of yet another semester has come once again. This has been my seventh semester in college at MTSU, and as with all semesters, it too has presented itself with its own challenges and eventfulness that actually warranted a month-long break. If I chose to go over all of those in one post, that would be a freaking long post, possibly rivaling the paper I wrote and put in my last post, so I'll go with the one that I was able to put into actual words first: the anime club.

Ok, here's the rough part.

Running this thing is hard. It's especially hard when the tiniest negative criticism usually makes me question what I'm doing. I try to do what I think is right, I get ignored and brushed off by people who think I'm over reacting and trying to be too orderly. I try to give in and we hardly even get what we're watching every week done, if that, and usually within a day or two of the actual meeting. Do I back down too easily, or am I too much of a straight-laced, order-bound figure head?

Here's a good case in point. We can't figure out what to watch in this club. We try to nail down a couple of running series, but later a couple of people complain about not liking them. I try asking the club up front at meetings what they think, and most of the crowd is quiet (a disturbing change from when I actually want them to be quiet when I give announcements). Our polling system failed last year because of few too many people voting on stale choices, so we tried this semester without one. A few people cried out, so I gave the people a poll that I know won't work because too few actually use it, and what do I get? Half, maybe less, of a regular meeting's attendance actually voting on it. Luckily, the choices haven't been bad, but it's still disheartening to see such little participation, which was one of the main problems in the first place.

It's amazing how figuring out just what to watch turns out to be so complicated. People wonder why we hardly ever do anything, but that should be obvious when an anime club can't collectively decide what anime to watch, and even then it's only a small number that seems to actively try. Maybe I expect too much. I, and some others, want this club to do some kind of big stuff, although we can rarely figure out the what or, more often, the execution. Even then, it seems some could care less. It's hard to do club activities that would actually get most of the people involved when we have so many varying tastes and interests in activities.

Too many of us seem to take things way too seriously and personal. Again, for me, I question a lot of my decisions when people criticize me. Others get some negative feedback, and they seem to want to just flat out avoid the club. I'm not talking about feedback like insults or yelling at someone. I mean simple disagreements in club business. Yes, club business does need to be somewhat serious, as we (or at least I) do actually want to run this thing like a club and not just some easy way for use to watch anime on a projector screen. However, we need to learn to not be so personal and use supposedly shot down ideas or any criticism for excuses to avoid meetings.

We've also had some other bumps in the road, like MTSU setting up a new system for student organizations to keep track of their members, throwing my whole method out the window, and relationship issues between club members that seemed to polarize some members for a little while, but those seem to be more superficial issues that are in addition to all the stuff I said above.

Now for some good news.

This semester has seem some more good additions and friends to the club, which is always nice. Some of them even seem to have good officer potential, which will come in handy with one of our officers stepping down during the break. The club AWA trip went decently well, and we have a good start for MTAC (no more 20 people in one room this time). What few All-Day-Anime days we have had have gone decently well, with a good turnout for the mecha-themed day and for the two AMV panels we've had. Plus, we actually finally have a club shirt design. I'm putting my foot down in that this is what we're going with. Any more going back and doing changes will result in even more going back and doing changes and then us never getting this done. Thank god next year's design is already ready.

As for what I need to do now, I need to basically reflect on what the hell we're doing here. Just basically rethink some issues, come up with some things to present right off the bat, and figure out how to get people involved more and get us to actually do stuff. I want to see more actual anime club projects. Also have a good bit of cleaning and organizing to do on the website and forums.

Sometimes, it's nice to have a month of free time just to play catch up.

Comments (0)

« Home

Anime | How to Draw Anime | Anime Wallpapers

Top of Page