The Honours College Dream a Dream Talent Show finally came to an end on Apr. 26th and with everyone’s efforts and contributions, we made the show a successful one and made the dream of HC students organizing a show came true. Now it’s time to look back a little bit and think about what I’ve learnt and how much I’ve grown up with this precious experience.
Let’s begin with our first committee meeting. At that time, we discussed for around 5 hours to settle those fundamental things of the show, for example, the theme, the target audience, job distribution of the team, time table of implementation, basic forms of performance of the show, etc. In fact, when looking back now, I am still proud that we’ve proposed a nice theme and slogan for the show, that’s ‘Dream a Dream.’ In fact, I got that inspiration from a song called ‘I Dream a Dream’ once sung by Susan Boyle. I suggested cutting the ‘I’, then we had dream not of an individual, but of ‘us’, of the whole HC batch. And with this set theme of ‘dream’, we found that the word ‘dream’ was really a good theme to let everything happen around it and we could come up with a lot of things compassing ‘dream’, since everyone had dream. Michael Jackson had one, Roddick had one, and whole class also did. We not only had dreams for ourselves, but also for others and for the whole world. That’s why I wrote in the proposal that ‘a world without hunger and a world of peace and a world of love’.
It was not an easy process to organize and prepare everything before hand; however, I find everything worthy. Apart from being the leader of the singing team, I was in charge of the general process of implementing the show, making sure everything was going according to schedule. I find this is a special role and helps me improve in a different way. Based on what I’ve learnt this time, a role like this is not supposed to focus on things that are not too minor; or else, the whole team may get trapped in a situation that it’s difficult to move on and finish everything as planned, since there is a lack of someone to monitor branches and departments of different job division. What is required from this role is conceptual thinking. However, for organizing such show and finishing such a relatively small project, this role also needs a kind of transition from ‘conceptual thinking’ to attention to important details, or else, contribution will be limited. I believe that’s the philosophy of being a good leader and manager.
As the leader of the singing team, we chose the song of ‘21 Guns’ by Green Day. It’s an anti-war song. We chose it, since we believe it’s kind of a strike to the dream of the world, a peaceful world. It was difficult to find a time suitable for every performer to practice. However, we did achieve ‘efficiency’ and ‘effectiveness’ this time, since we really didn’t practice for too many times. And I believe that’s a lot due to our members’ individual practice at home and their commitment to this performance.
During the show night, though we thought we’d almost settle everything in advance, there were still emergencies which required us to react quickly, efficiently and effectively. I believe that’s also important for a good leader since we need to learn to deal with unprepared situations and still make everything look perfect for the audience. I think we made it this time. During the show, we committees still phoned a lot to each other, just to ensure everything and discuss a fast solution to emergency. This kind of skill will only be practiced when we are actually faced with an emergency, so I really did treasure this experience.
After the show, I though so much, not just about myself, but about the HC family. I think we really have become a family, a true family this time. It was just everyone’s commitment to the show that turned it a brilliant one and our fellows become parts of the family. With such a strong sense of willingness and eagerness to do a perfect job, we just made it a success. And just because of the great success, we feel proud of each other; and with this ‘pride’, we feel connected and attached to each other and sense a sense of belonging. After the show, everyone was happily taking photos with each other, laughing, cheering, hugging, and having fun. What were flowing in my mind were the words of “family” and “sense of belonging”. In fact, HC is the only true ‘class’ I will meet and stay in the University of Macau for the whole four years. Thus, this kind of emotional attachment with our fellows is really precious. There is a saying. It goes like, “there is no the best, only a better one.” In fact, no matter how much we feel proud of our successful show, I realize there is still space room for us to do a more perfect job. And that’s the goal for the next HC batch. Thus, I sincerely hope next time our juniors will do a much better job and make the show a more successful one.
