There are lots of things people like about being a member of our beloved association. The friendships we make, places we discover, European Nights some unfortunate souls do not remember, and the familiarity. AEGEE is a little world where lots of people seem to know each other. You go to an event, meet new people, and, after the other introduces themselves, you say: „I know someone from your antenna“.
Being a part of a big network and a small village is nice and comforting at the same time. You even know people you have never talked to, but you have seen them around or heard their names. Others you know because they have done a great deal for AEGEE and some have merely built up a reputation of being someone who – let’s phrase it politely – have conquered lots of the beauties Europe has to offer.
And there is one little sentence most of us have heard: „He/She is famous in AEGEE.“ If you consider AEGEE a village, being a so-called „famous“ person is not all that impressive. If someone holds a position in AEGEE or sends lots of emails to AEGEE-L, it is no miracle these people are known within the network. Comite Directeur (CD) members are a good example as they are the village celebrities. They have presented their candidature in front of hundreds of people, travel around, send emails to the network, and lots of members are very keen on taking pictures with them.
The election craze
In the AEGEE village, even just saying you want to be a CD member can make you an instant internet sensation. Online you can find long interviews, topped off with the best holiday pictures, convincing us why the potential candidates are the right ones for the position. In times where internet rules the world, promotion has become more urgent than handing in the actual application form.
When you find yourself accepted in the in-crowd of AEGEE-Europe (or you just cannot hide your latest escapades from the network), there is one obvious advantage: you do not need to introduce yourself, people already know your name. However, you might be intimidating and people are shy around you all of a sudden, people will know things about you which you either would not tell them or which actually are downright wrong, and some people just want to be seen with you.
Advice nobody asked for
Even though nobody asked for my opinion, I kindly ask you to consider three things:
Stop thinking people are famous.
Do respect people for the work they do. But do not think that others are better than you, that you cannot talk to them, or that you need to act weird around them. We are all volunteers who do not just work for a better Europe, but we also want to meet new people and have fun.
Let the others say what they want.
Trying to be everybody’s darling is pointless. Be as sweet as you want, there will always be those who don’t like you for whatever reason. Take it from the rappers: Haters gonna hate.
Do not use more than one exclamation mark or question mark, stop using tons of smilies, and never – never – use emoticons if you want to be taken seriously (this has nothing to do with the rest of the article, but I felt it had to be said).
And they gossiped happily ever after…
In AEGEE, we are overall quite nice and respectful to each other and of course little harm can be done when people gossip a bit. But every now and then, just stop and think whether things you hear might be true. A lot of them are not. If I think of the things some people in AEGEE think about me (and I am usually the very last one to hear all the gossips, so thank God I do not know about the rest), I have to consider myself quite bipolar; I am nice as well as tough, mean, and bitchy; I am serious as well as a loudmouth cracking stupid jokes all the time; I am the boring relationship girl as well as the flirty heartbreaker. Obviously, not all of this can be true. And, as mentioned before, there is no point in making a big deal out of it (I even went as far as to repeat some of the things others said about me just to prove my point. Stop caring what others say).
Luckily, AEGEE is not just a village where people gossip, but also a place where you can meet intelligent and inspiring people and stand up for what you believe in. And it is a place where you make true friends. In the end, all that really matters is that there are those who know and like the real you and laugh with you at stupid things that some random person thinks he has to say.
Written by Yvonne Antonovic, AEGEE-Utrecht
Photography by Roman Klementschitz, Vienna, Austria & modified by Erman Berkay, AEGEE-Magusa