Back to "me"

I am not a native English speaker and I love blogging. I live abroad, and have many friends who don’t speak Russian. I think Aigul can understand me better than others – you just love a taste of your mother language, but English allows you to “talk” to more people. So you write in both languages.

I am in Morocco for one week, but it feels like I am here for ages. Re-integration to AIESEC and adaptation to local culture is pretty intensive, but enjoyable so far.

Few things:
I just came back from the national conference – 250 delegates, ocean just 5 minutes walk away, EB track, My AIESEC story session. There was a moment when I felt like completely loosing the empathy, ability to feel the audience, kind of intuition “what will work”. But as I am staying quite cold-headed and don’t judge myself as strictly as last year, I enjoyed it. People are the same as in any country, their motives are different. If you can understand WHY they behave in certain manner, the dialogue becomes much more constructive. But my concern is that answering “WHY” question as an “absolutely objective” point of view we use ours. It shouldn’t work if I am right. But it is. Looking for the answer.

In general conference was good, messages delivered (so funny, there we two sessions on the last day – one mine, another done by Youssef. Whatever they were about, the main message and main question was “what you gonna do TOMORROW to write your AIESEC story and contribute to Growth?” It seems to me that AIESEC oldies have allergy to all these blah-blah “we are the family”. If you don’t do anything, AIESEC itself will not exist, so really care about the family means not to talk and send nice letters, but work for reason of existence), some of the delegates extremely brilliant and nice, people smiling and open, MANY can sing really well, I am starting to love my new MC team.

About “take it easy” stuff and my CEE soul: we didn’t have pre-meeting, I could never find OC, delegates were always late, at faci-meetings we could discuss sugar-cubes for 20 minutes in French (which made me mad), but didn’t say a word about the content of the session as well as about the level of preparation. They say, that European culture is much more “individualistic”, but I noticed that we use “collective intelligence” much more, giving inputs for each others sessions (content, delivery etc.) Another funny thing is in every country people prioritize things in a different way. For example, in Russia delegates would complain that there was not enough water, that parties were short, that there were not enough rooms for tracks and some were sitting outside in darkness. But here main complaints were: food and a big amount of information. By the way, food is just AWESOME. Can you imagine, having rice with seafood and fried small fishes, and vegetable soup for dinner? And huge plate of vegetables for lunch as a starter? Everything is served on big plates in the middle of the table and then everyone takes as much as he needs. Bread is delicious (French influence – croissants, pane chocolat are also good) and I am eating too much of it, so don’t be surprised to see more of “me” in some parts of my bodyJ

I have a lot of job here. I mean I can potentially have, because at the end of the day you can’t do everything. I need to solve it, otherwise will die for AIESEC Morocco and will need to take a rest again after the term.

Yesterday, after coming back from conference (LCP lost keys from the car, so we were first freezing outsides with Regula and Youssef, without food, late for the train. Then Regula and me moved inside and was watching Sex and the City episode while guys tried to solve car issue), so when we were finally back, changed clothes fast and were chilling in cafes for next 3 hours, trying to talk about whatever but aiesec. We failed few times (the longest “non-aiesec” part was when Regula was explaining me smth about Kerling which she was practicing for 9 years). And all these AIESEC discussions (for sure, we continued chatting with Regula at home), mainly about steering team, subcommittees, MCPs, AI, strategies, made me think if actually people are different? Or each MCP wants to lead “a country with name” and be recognized as really strong leader, strategist blah-blah by AI (even though if you ask, MCPs ALWAYS have a lot of complaints towards AI). What I mean by “different” – may be putting the interests of network, countries higher than personal ambitions in strategies implementation (because some of them are based on whatever analysis and don’t take into consideration REAL situation in some countries or areas). Yes, the “big boss” feeling is an amazing one, and I still think that each MCP has huuuge EGO and we (they) are comparing “who’s the coolest man in the network” – even if they (we) are women. Another funny thing is “and after his term everything crashed. So am starting from the beginning” – definitely we are better, that previous MCP and we (two of us, who are talking) much smarter than anyone in the network.

And that’s what surprises me about Russians (MCPs, MC etc.) – we don’t have a habit to show off. May be its in country’s culture (individuality was not appreciated in soviet period), but getting to know other countries I see more and more clearly, that there are a lot of things we do better. But where are GCPs from Russia? Search, you’ll not find many. May be we don’t like to share? Not really, otherwise so many cool people would not go abroad for MCs. How can you transmit your ideas and share experience with the network? Be in global teams. But if you haven’t traveled for the conferences/CEEDs a lot, people don’t know you (for us it’s quite expensive to travel a lot, takes much time and requires visa for almost any country). If you don’t have country brand, you’ll never be in global teams (don’t tell me about results – average Russian LC is doing quite well), so you’ll stay in your country with your perfect skills of virtual management and communication, experience of working in diverse and big teams and being really good in LC coaching (you don’t have choice to be bad, if you see the LC for 3 days two times a year). And you know what? Russia itself doesn’t really needs a brand as a country. We don’t have problems with making AIESEC happen in the country staying “big country with huge potential”, but AIESEC network could benefit much more from AIESEC Russia.

Last year I sometimes felt like “stop f***ing my brains” – all these Very Important Questions, which, to tell the truth, either pushed by AI and anyway will be accepted, or are so important that even don’t have follow-up after, or just lacking transparency and you know only the final outcome, not how and why decision has been made. No-no, I don’t want to discuss it, I am simply bithchingJ (to think what can be changed I should last year. But I was young and had too many important things to care about in my country). Just came to my mind - when you are MCP, you are on the one hand is trying to be “friends” with AI, on the other, have a long list of “things to change” but not so much time. As soon as you are inside AI, you have different role and again has too many things to find time for that “long list of complaints” and… why should you care?

Why am I thinking about it? Disappointed with AIESEC? Not really. Too much “in”? No. Most probably, my stupid habit to care about whatever I am doing. Just need to find a way to distinguish right things from random things.

P.S. Here they cut my name from Anastasia to Ana, which sounds exactly like “me” in Arabic.
P.P.S. Markelova is in Brazil. Cool. Three people from MC 0607 are in Latin America, two people from MC 0708 are in Africa.