Captains’ Corner | Vice Captain, Ben Chatwood

I decided that for my second edition of Captains’ Corner, I would write a column on my pursuit to be organised, given that last term was very hectic for me and required a lot of organisation. Funnily enough, though, due to my peculiar (not bad but certainly not ideal) organisational skills, I have come to write this piece three times now. I was pretty happy with my first piece, only to discover it was not my week for the Captains’ Corner, so I put my completed writing aside, thinking it would be all good to go the following week. I then discovered my piece needed some fine-tuning to fit in the occurrences of the week that had just passed. Unfortunately, another lockdown struck Brisbane, which gave me some much-needed time to write my second edition, but after I finished it and emailed it in, I was told that due to the lockdown, we would not have a newsletter. And this leads to my third attempt, trying to be somewhat insightful about being organised when clearly,  it is not always beneficial to be too organised.

The beginning of making a plan is always daunting, and you have a massive list of things to do and usually a minimal timeframe in which to do them. I used to like to divvy up time for each activity, but this was completely flawed as I would assign too much time to some activities and end up procrastinating, then not enough time to others which would lead to late nights and increased levels of stress. Not ideal. And it seemed that whenever I managed to spread out my time perfectly and I was completely organised, something out of my control would pop up, and I would be in for a late night again. Also not ideal. Or, you forget to do another smaller activity, such as making a poster for the National Action Day Against Bullying, which haunts you every time you descend the stairs and are confronted with a blank space next to the other College Captains’ posters. Definitely not ideal. 

My message is not to dismiss the concept of the plan, because even dodgy planning is generally a better option for optimal results, but rather not to assume that everything you do is reliant upon an inflexible plan.  Things constantly change, things that are out of our control and we must be flexible to change and adapt to the new situation, adjust the plan. A very wise man once told me that whatever you have to do will get done, so no need to get too worried about it. That sounds like an excellent plan to me. Answer the Call to plan things...as best you can.