Interview: Head of Public Relations

Who are you?

Hello, svejsan! My name is Thilda Qvist and I am 22 years old. Before I took a study break, I studied my fourth year of Chemical Engineering.

What's yours position And why did you apply for it?

I have been sitting as Head of Public Relations for the past year. Applying to Sabbatical Officers was actually a process that started earlier than I knew. I have a mutual friend with a former Sabbatical Officers, so we had lunch together a few times. She told me about how the post of Head of Public Relations was vacant and I started thinking about it, but thought "I'm not going to take a study break, I'm going to finish". However, the interest was aroused so I contacted the then President and told her that I was interested in joining the Public Relations Committee. Due to the lack of Head of Public Relations there was no Information Committee either. However, he realized that they wanted help with their newsletter, and since I had experience with it from my Guild I thought it was a fun thing to do alongside other commitments. Then when they finally opened the choice for a new Info, I had come to the conclusion that it would be very fun to work as Sabbatical Officers. So I applied!

What's been the most fun in your term of office ?

The most fun has still been my colleagues. Working as Sabbatical Officers is special, the line between friendship and colleague is not as clear and we spend a lot of time together outside of work, which I think is great fun! I also like to design things so it was a nice break from my studies.

What has been most instructive during your term of office ?

My position is very dependent on what others do. This means that I have had to collaborate a lot with others. Both my full-time colleagues and others in the organization. This has really forced me to develop my communication skills in order to get what I need to do my job. As the work is quite free, it has also demanded my ability to plan things over a longer period of time and manage my different projects. In addition, I have also become much better at speaking up and taking up space. Something I thought was hard when I started, but which I have now developed a lot with.

What does your day-to-day business look like?

As Head of Public Relations , my calendar is often more or less empty, but that doesn't mean I don't have things to do. Instead of going to a lot of meetings, like many others Sabbatical Officers, I instead work a lot with many different projects. For example, it can be planning how we should reach out to our members in the best way, developing a nice and uniform design that makes it easy to connect things or fixing administrative issues to make everything run smoothly. Every Monday I write our newsletter, Kårnytt, which takes up quite a large part of Monday. The other days are fairly free. Sometimes I still have some meetings, for example with the information committee, someone else Sabbatical Officers or committee chair. Once a month I also meet the information officers from all The Guilds who are members of the Info College. We talk about common difficulties and come up with ideas together. It is incredibly rewarding!

Do you have anything you want to say to our readers?

If you think it would be fun to be Sabbatical Officers then APPLY! I did not really feel that I wanted to take a break from studying, but still applied because it seemed so fun and in retrospect it is very nice to have had a "break".