Interview with Deianara Couwet, Vice President of EFPSA

January 6, 2021 secretary 0 Comments

We have an open call for EFPSA’s Board 2021-2022 and you can find it here. Because we wanted to present more of each position and the work that it entails, we are presenting you a series of interviews done with the current members of The Board. If you want to know more about the position of Vice President, you can contact Deianara at vicepresident@efpsa.org

 

Why did you decide to apply for this position?

I already had a Board position in my MO while at the same time being the MR of Belgium. After some months, I started thinking about what following steps I could take as I was not done yet with gaining new experiences as a volunteer. EB&MR was a tipping point for me where I completely fell in love with EFPSA and all the wonderful people and felt like I very much wanted to have a bigger role within EFPSA. After doing some thinking I decided to look around at the different Board positions which made me interested in the position of Vice President. I had a talk with Tea, the Vice President of that mandate, and I was immediately convinced! I was very excited about the variety of this position and all the new experiences I hoped to gain. After this talk, I took a leap of faith and filled in the application and I have not had a moment since where I regretted this decision!

 

How do you balance this commitment with your other responsibilities (work, studying, job, etc.)?

I am a big fan of planning my time for which Google Calendar and to-do lists are my best buddies 🙂 I have always been quite organised so I did not have any troubles in that regard. However, I do sometimes still struggle with wanting to do too much and putting EFPSA as a first priority but I guess I am learning more and more when to switch priorities. I also think it is very important to set clear boundaries for yourself. I learnt that as a Board member you will always have a never-ending to-do list (or at least I do) because you can always do more and start new projects. I started splitting up my tasks into short-term and important tasks and long-term and not important tasks which really helped me prioritise and press the pause button once in a while. 

 

What were your biggest challenges for you as a part of the Board and as your position?

I think for me personally the biggest challenge has been staying up to date with everything that is happening. As the Vice President, you not only coordinate your 3 Services but you are also in the Presidential Office which has its own set of tasks (e.g. staying up to date with the tasks of your fellow board members, general deadlines, some more administrative tasks, etc.). It has been a challenge but I have also learnt a lot and developed my own kind of system to keep track of things. It was actually one of the reasons why I was interested in the position in the first place. Being Vice President ensures that you will have a lot of variety in tasks and I really like the challenge of it.

 

What have you gained from this experience and what was the most rewarding part of it?

To be honest I could write a book about all the things I gained from this experience. I have become even more organised than I ever was, my time management has improved, I learned how to efficiently prepare and chair meetings, how to make connections with externals, how to guide several teams, etc. I could keep going on and on about it. I know that all of these experiences will have a huge advantage when I will start applying for jobs and they have made me more ready to start working once I graduate. But the most rewarding part of it? It is definitely and without doubt, the people! I love meeting and getting to know our EFPSAnauts. I have been so fortunate to get to know so many people within EFPSA and call them my friends. I am especially grateful for my fellow board members. As BM you spend a lot of time together and even then we ask each other to have a spontaneous working session together. These 7 other people have been a blessing and I could not imagine not having them in my life.

 

What would you say are the important assets for becoming a Board member?

I think having respect for other opinions is a very important asset. As a Board member, you will have a lot of discussions on all kinds of topics and sometimes you can have an entirely different opinion than others. It is essential that you are always respectful of other opinions and open to each other’s ideas and opinions. Additionally, I believe that transparency is also a huge one. You do not need to only be transparent with your Working Community but also with each other. It is okay to take breaks or that you do not feel well or forgot or failed to do something, however, your fellow Board members can only help and support you if you are transparent with them and let them know what is going on with you. There are several other assets that can be important but I want to mention one last one here: do not be afraid to make mistakes. I, myself, can be a perfectionist and I learnt that nobody is perfect and mistakes will happen. Forgive yourself (and others) for not being perfect and be proud of yourself. As long as you are transparent with your fellow Board members, you will be able to work it out whatever the mistake is.

 

What was the best moment of your mandate so far?

Gosh, this is a hard one. I honestly loved so many moments! I think it must have been our virtual EB&MR. I was really scared of EB&MR happening online and people not connecting with each other. I loved seeing people connect during the sessions and the social evenings but my most favourite moment was after (I think it was) the Closing Ceremony. We put on some music at the end so people could leave the ZOOM call with a nice tune and then all of a sudden a lot of people stayed and we had this impromptu online dancing session!