What a weekend. I had absolutely no time to blog, nor time to do anything else of my own business.

FSS had their general assembly from Friday to Sunday at the island of Kemiö. We arrived by bus and slept in the gymnasium there, and since we had an amazing chairperson, we got through the most boring parts of the agenda already on the first evening. Later on that night I lead the debate we usually have as an evening activity. I like debating, so usually I participate, but I was asked to lead it and that was a very cool experience as well! I had a hard time keeping quiet when it came to equality questions, but it turned out to go pretty well. On Saturday, I spent 2 hours literally working on grass-root level, meaning I wrote a thank you-speech and made a visual version of the board’s annual report lying in the grass outside the school. Then  I spent another 2 hours as secretary for the committee that looked through the Education-Political Programme. The programme was given a total makeover by the board, so the content was familiar, but the committee could come up with any changes they wanted to. Later on, the GA (Student Parliament) got to vote between the board’s proposition and the committee’s proposals. The biggest debates this year were almost the same as last year, education & religion and the right to vote at age 16. Both got through with the proposals I made up and supported, so I’m happy about that. I think everyone should get information and education about all the religions and no one should be forced to specify on a religion they don’t believe in or are interested in. Later on in education, I don’t see why you couldn’t teach people more about a certain religion as, for example, an optional course. The starting point shall be that no one is forced to learn about a certain religion they don’t feel like learning at any point, but that everyone gets the information needed to survive in society with other people and somehow understand them.

About the age to vote, I believe it wouldn’t make a big difference to lower the age with two years, since 16-yearolds do the exact same thing 50-yearolds do. They vote, if they’re interested. And I could go on about this forever, but I’m at work and already feeling a little lazy.

We got through the budget, the plan for this year and the propositions. It was tiring, but so worth it, and I had a lot of things to say, questions to ask and opinions to be heard. The evening ended with the annual Golden Hat Gala, where the best Finn-Swedish student council is awarded. I also held the visual annual report, basically a slideshow, and the thank you-speech together with the rest of the board. And this is the point where I started to feel really nostalgic.

So I filled in an application for vice president. And turns out, the Student Parliament had gotten a way better picture of me than I ever expected, and I was elected for the upcoming year. Many of my friends (yes, I feel like calling them friends) also candidated, which made the decision on who to vote for a lot harder, but I’m happy almost all of them got in. I’m overall very satisfied with the rest of the new presidium, president Nicholas Kujala and vice president Tyko Hertzberg, plus the rest of the new board of course. This is going to be so much fun (and work)!

I got a ride home with Otto and Nicholas and that was a really nice way of ending this year’s GA. Today I got a message saying that I’m also welcome in the student council of my school, and we have the first meeting tomorrow. And now I’m dead tired in my bed, after a full day of internship, meetings, writing pressreleases and articles, evaluating Porvoo city’s development programmes and translating documents.