#bkpi

Have you explored Hye Yun Park’s work yet?

I have been involved with BKPI for the better part of the year now. It has been memorable and I'm glad I was able to experience it. It is December 2013 now and it's almost time for us third year students to leave BKPI and for second year students to take control with the help of first year students.

Alex (from batch 2011 - my batch) was made the chairman of BKPI earlier this year. He had barely heard of BKPI before then, let alone have experience with it. I can see that he tried his best despite being inexperienced and despite  many ups and downs. I'm sure it has been a learning experience for him personally, and also for the rest of us. We planned. We tried new things. We succeeded. We stumbled. We laughed. We sighed. It was a memorable year and we can say we managed to pull off a number of events with remarkable success: IFF, Mock Tentamen for Block A1, Mock OSCE for 1st years, Halloween party, and participation in the MAW blood drive. This is the first time we can say that if you don't know what BKPI is, you're not in FK inter. (If you consider this an achievement, then it has been achieved).

That being said, I just want to clarify that the following list is in no way criticising Alex or any of the other volunteers of BKPI (current ones, past ones, or future ones). It's simply a list of things that I personally feel (as a student here) will make BKPI more effective. It's just my opinion, so don't take it as anything more than that.

Remember who you are. You are a student of the International Program at the Faculty of Medicine. You represent all the students currently studying in all the batches here. You are their voice and their will. So, my suggestion is that you consider the primary aim/mission of BKPI before making any decisions. What's the mission? Well I think it should be: "BKPI works to improve student life for the students in the International Program." To me, this means that BKPI's main goal is to take care of student grievances - in other words: fix academic problems. Secondary to that would be to make student life more enjoyable with small, frequent, fun events.

Avoid bureaucracy. Creating too many rules, regulations, and paperwork will only confuse people and make simple tasks tedious. Try your best to avoid this. Bureaucracy will only create obstacles. Rules like "all BKPI members have to attend meetings" are stupid because if your meetings suck, nobody will want to come. So, instead of making this rule, simply make the meetings interesting and useful. (The same logic applies to our lectures!). Additionally, when you want to name something, ensure its name describes its function as accurately as possible. For example, if you have a department that does events, call it "Events" (don't call it "Department of Things that Happen" - an extreme example to help you understand my point). For the last year, we had a department called "Student Services" and everybody would have to ask "what do they do? do they provide services to students?" THIS should never happen! Nobody should ask what a department or position does! It should be part of the name itself.

Avoid hierarchy. Creating too many positions and then putting these positions in a hierarchy is a mistake that many new, inexperienced organizations make. In other words, don't create positions like "Vice President", "Head of Academics", and "Executive Council", etc. Instead, give people ownership of tasks rather than giving them ownership of positions. So, for example, you have decided to make a poster about some event that's coming up. Instead of bugging somebody in a "publicity department" to do it, simply ask any of the members of BKPI, "Hey guys, who wants to do this poster?" and whoever puts their hand up, simply assign the task to them. People perform better and are more responsible on tasks that they feel they own, rather than tasks that were assigned to them (which feels more like a burden and a job). So, am I saying "get rid of departments"? Yes. I suggest you create a list of tasks instead and let people volunteer for those tasks. As the leader of BKPI, you are a moderator of volunteers (not an owner of slaves), so you can choose among the volunteers for each task - instead of assigning those tasks to a department. If nobody wanted to do a task, it's okay - it's not your fault. It just means that nobody is interested in doing it. Learn to trust your fellow students. They can be just as responsible as you. If you stop trusting people, they will stop caring about the mission. -- Example: You want to organize a "Mock OSCE". Which department will handle this? Social? Academic? Student Services? Or a new group of members recruited just for this event? Since you have divided the BKPI members artificially into "departments", there is overlap and there are people that really want to help out but they can't because they're in the wrong department. So, in the end, will you just announce: "hey everybody, please come help out!" ?  So... my question is: Why were there departments to begin with? Wouldn't organizing the event be easier if whoever's interested sat down and decided a list of tasks that need to be done for the event, and then whoever wants can volunteer to do those tasks? -- FYI: many people joined BKPI just so they can write it on their CV. Do you really want people to be a part of BKPI that don't care about BKPI, and only care about their CV?

No hyper-inflated job titles. Did you know the president of Uganda, Idi Amin's full title was: His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, CBE, Lord of all the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular. -- PLEASE don't make this mistake by creating departments and positions with long, cool sounding titles/names. Your role is to efficiently and effectively improve the student life of FK inter students, not to be pompous. Gain respect by being humble and with your actions instead of your titles and self-praise. Job titles should never be used as currency/rewards either. A position in BKPI should be a burden that the volunteer chooses to undertake, rather than a "Oh cool! I'm the Sultan of the Social Department! I am so lucky! Thank you for this blessing!"

Short, effective meetings. Meetings should be limited to a maximum of 30 minutes. Don't hold a meeting unless you have a reason for the meeting. The idea of "let's hold a meeting every two weeks" is not effective. Again, only hold a meeting if you have something to meet about. Your meeting should not be a lecture; it should be a discussion - like a brainstorming session or a QA session. Schedule the meetings at least one week prior. Do not change the time of the meeting. If the meeting cannot happen for whatever reason, simply cancel it and schedule a new meeting for next week. Finally, remember: meetings are very difficult because medical students are busy and have different schedules. Their time is valuable and you should try your best not to waste it.

Create ONE channel of communication between the BKPI members. I suggest making an open Facebook group (because Line and Twitter tend to get cluttery) and using that to coordinate all the BKPI members. Do not create too many lines of communication or else you'll be wasting time sending SMS's, tweets, LINE's, BBM's, and WhatsApps to dozens of people, and you will always be forgetting somebody and pissing them off. So, pick ONE channel of communication (I highly suggest Facebook) and use that ONLY. Less work for you, more organized, all in one place. Mizter Antok uses one channel of communication (Facebook) and everybody knows exactly where to go for that information. I suggest you do the same.

BKPI should be OPEN. BKPI should not be a closed-door club. Do not keep secrets. You are responsible and accountable to the rest of the students of  FK inter. Your meetings should be open to any FK inter student that wishes to come to them. There should not be any recruitment. If somebody wants to be involved, they should be allowed to walk in. If somebody wants to leave, they should simply get up and walk away. The idea of interviewing people is degrading and useless. There are many people that give excellent interviews during recruitment but then disappear shortly afterwards or get lazy. So, if somebody wants to help, let them. Get rid of the bureaucracy!

Keep it democratic. Involve people into decision-making. When I say "people", I don't mean just the BKPI members, but all FK inter students. After all, you represent them and are playing with their money, so they should get a say in what BKPI does. It's easy to be democratic. For example, simply make a Facebook poll asking, "what event should we do next?" to all FK inter students and people can suggest and vote for whatever they wish.

Organize small events. Trying to do huge, spectacular events may sound like a good idea but they have a greater chance of failure and may not be more fun or effective than smaller events. You want to build a library for poor people in a village? Why not start by collecting books from senior students and donating them to our campus library? -- You want to host a huge sporting event with decorations and award ceremonies? Why not just play some music from a boombox and play frisbee or dodgeball? Or just tell everybody to meet up at the beach at a certain date/time (bring your own food/drinks).

Maintain good relations with other organizations. I think we did quite well in this department and it's one of the things I've learned is quite important. However, I think BKPI should be looking beyond just CIMSA, BEM, PKPMI, etc. to organizations doing work in Jogja and beyond. I think it's a good idea to piggyback on those organizations and take part in events that help nurture our medical careers. For example, we can collaborate with sports events (such as futsal competitions) where we provide on-the-spot first-aid (cuts, bruises, strains, etc.)

Get more international students to come to FK. I am not saying Indonesians are bad (haha!) I love Indonesians and I feel more and more part of them every day I live here. When I travel outside Jogja and people ask me where I am from, sometimes I just say "Jogja!" -- Back to the point: I feel that the International Program is becoming more of a misnomer every year as fewer and fewer Malaysians come over to study here. (Our little International Program is not very international as it is!) I think BKPI should devote some of their efforts to attracting students from overseas to come to FK UGM. Why? Because it will improve FK UGM's reputation and relations with other countries. More students graduating from FK will be going back home to their countries and take our university's degree with them. Hopefully that degree will be on hanging on the walls of clinics all over the world. It will also encourage the faculty to modernise and improve the program, since foreign students tend to be more demanding and outspoken. There will also be a push towards more liberalization and open-mindedness. There may also be more students interested in doing their clerkships (koas) overseas as well. It's not hard to do all this, and if you're seriously thinking about it, please contact me (I have some ideas on how to attract more foreign students here). Also, keep in mind that this will require the permission and close collaboration with IOSS. (speaking of this, see my post on ValueMD.com, a website foreign students look at to find international medical schools). -- Also, a side-note: try to promote English. This is the international program and it shouldn't just be a more expensive regular program. You need to set some standards and one very clear standard is that everybody communicates in  English (the international language).

BKPI. And finally, change the name for god's sake! "BKPI" is such a terrible name. Rename it to "Student Union" (long, official name: "Student Union of the International Program at the Faculty of Medicine, UGM"). We can call it "SU" (pronounced "su") for short.

I sincerely hope that BKPI continues to evolve and get better at improving life for FK-inter students.