Life in "General"

On a day like today, you can be both really excited to be a part of CJAM and really depressed. Why you ask? Well it is it because today, September 24th, is the one day of the year where CJAM as an organization is picked apart and looked at from all aspects. It is the Annual General Meeting, or the AGM.

Now, I am sort of a nerd. I like the AGM. I get really excited during the day, watching the hands of the clock get closer and closer to 7 o'clock. Why do I like the AGM do you ask? I am not exactly sure. I guess I kind of like the aspect of being apart of something bigger. You get to play company executive a little, with all the serving motions and seconding motions. I also like the fact you get inside inform on upcoming events and really it gives me material to write about in this blog.

But with the good comes the boring. To go along with this exciting stuff that I mention before, there is a whole load of boring stuff. When I say boring, I don't mean unimportant, because in reality all of the goings on at the AGM are important. It's just stuff that kind of is just "going through the motions". You have to review the budget, which is always a treat. But I do have to say we did fly right through that tonight. Then there is always one person who really has done too much research and talks WAY too much. I guess it is good because they utilize the AGM for what its true purpose is, to talk about issues they have that are going on at the station. But to be honest, a lot of us there (maybe I am just talking about myself) are there to get together as a big group, go through some of the upcoming events, do the usual song and dance that is needed to be done, but overall to get free pizza and pop. I am glad they find a bigger purpose for the AGM, but to be honest I do find that a lot of people were talking when some of the volunteers brought up more trivial topics. But I must reiterate again, they ARE using the AGM for its purpose, this is just my opinion.

What did we chat about at this year's AGM. Excellent question. As usually we have staff reports, which is a summary of what each staff member has done in the last year or so. These are usually recaps for a lot of volunteers because a lot of us spend so much time at the station that we've seen a lot of these summaries unfold in front of us. After the staff reports, we went over the finance and the numbers that the station put up over the last year. I would get more in depth into this topic, but I don't think it is entirely appropriate for this type of forum (if you are actually interested I suggest you ask someone at the station and they will assist your inquiry). One of the bigger topics we talked about was th annual pledge drive, which is one of the main events in the CJAM calendar. We briefly touched upon the pledge drive during the meeting, but I don't want to get too into it as it will be its own blog entry in the coming weeks. Let's just say the shirts this year are 100% sweeter.

Another of the big events which we talked about was National Campus Radio Confernce. This is also an event which I will talked about in a later blog entry. Let's just say that the talk at the meeting was incredibly encouraging, and I think this event will do so much for CJAM and the University within the scholastic community.

The last event of the night is usually my favourite but this year was a big let down. the election for the Board of Directors is usually the most exciting moment of the meeting. People nominate others, and it is very edge of your seat. This year not so much. Four seats were open, four people got nominated. Not exciting. But my nomination did get a seat, Go Murad!

So, that's it for another year. The AGM is one of my favourite CJAM events of the year and unfortunately I have to wait another 365 days till the next one.