The Storm

Students, so young, filled with potential, yet also filled with so much naivety. We live our lives at school, always learning now things, constantly preparing for the world outside. Yet we never really experience it, and when we arrive to the world outside. We are shocked, incapable to handling it, while trying our best to sort ourselves out.

So students were encouraged to be active, to make projects, to apply what they were learning and make it happen in the world. They gathered us in groups, allowing us to work together and protect our rights, and then student organisations came to be. The idea of the organisations, stems from what I believe to be the idea of collations, or trade unions. These organisations, started at first by imitating their seniors, being an elite, an untouchable elite, one with special privileges.

Now we are at a stage, where these people are some of the most approachable possible. We see it with the current KSU, walk in their office, and they do their best to solve your problem no matter how stupid or simple it is. Making you feel at home and welcomed, such a different experience from the one I got back in the day in my first year where I felt that they wanted to throw me out.

The ideal situation, amazing and brilliant!

Yet, and a big yet, I do not feel happy about the situation. Its still January but I am already noticing the oncoming storm, the simple calm that exams bring, I can feel the tremble of the far away thunder. I can see people preparing to survive this onslaught, and come out on top of it. The elections for the KSU office, they say its a bipartisan system with SDM and PULSE fighting it out, yet I say that this is wrong.

That is simply the last battle, the last struggle which is made clear to everyone. No the struggle  comes before hand, something that is not seen by everyone, the mobilization, the political moves, the popularity contests. Trying to get influence with organisations, trying to get people to like them, what ever the blow they can deliver, they deliver, there is no low ground. They do not care about the actual post that they are fighting for, what it is supposed to mean, they just see the road towards it, and their glory once in it.

Well, to be someone able to join any student organisation, not just KSU, it is not how popular you are, it is not how many people you know. It is not what your vision is for the future, not at all, it is the ability to guess what people want, and see how you can do your  best way to make that happen. If you want to lead, to be a leader, it matters jack shit if you are the most popular person, because you will fail. To be a leader, you have to earn the peoples trust, you have to build yourself a name, to do what ever you need to do to help people, not what will make you look good or nice. No you have to be able to take the hard decision to stand up against the system. I am rambling, yes, but this is the point, a point that makes me so angry and sad, filled with despair.

University organisations, at the University of Malta, have too many people trying to impress others, rather than serve others, with people who want to be seen, rather than people who want to make something happen and are able to take a stand. These people are a small minority or a large majority, I cannot say because I am just one person looking though the looking glass. I am someone who is already in the system, someone who is worried about how he is seen, because of comments he gets. I am someone who wants to help as much as possible ,but at every turn I am judged and made to look like I want to be the most popular kid on campus, something that cannot be farther than the truth.

I do not seek to help others for the ultimate purpose of holding power, I seek power for the ultimate purpose of helping others. Work for what you need to do, not to be celebrated, but work for what you love, and what you believe in. Do not make something happen to get praise, make something happen to be proud of your self and remember the pride in seeing seeds you sow grow into something larger than you ever imagined.