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Mine is at Leisure Time Recreation...a family swimming pool/golf course in Stow. Of course, my job is pretty much what my job has been since the beginning of my “summer job� career years back, and that’s serving food.
Except for last year, when I worked the 4am shift at Target so I could drive 3 hours to Columbus at night and try out for the marching band at night, only to return at midnight for a solid 3 hours of sleep. Yeah, maybe my current job isn’t so bad.
Most people I’m working with are my age or younger...it’s funny how fast I lose the ability to connect with high school students...I mean really, it’s a whole different level. Every time I talk to them about my high school days, I refer to it as “a long time ago,� like I’m...old or something.
Let’s keep this simple and to the point...basically, I’ve been screwing up since day one. Messing up orders, throwing away orders, dropping things...careless mistakes. And I got the feeling no one was a really big fan of the screw-up. I thought it was going to be a loooong summer. But it’s been almost 2 weeks now, and it’s finally starting to come together a little bit...and I’m finally starting to connect with the already tight group of girls that I work with...I’ve learned that the key is appearing confident...when everyone else screws up, it doesn’t even show on their faces.
Ok, so I got the money situation covered, now all I need to do is get some broadcast experience. I read in my Television Career Planning Tips manual from Buckeye TV that I need to start getting experience the summer before sophomore year...aka right now. That means, even though I’ve contacted them twice and then put it off for so long that now it will just be very awkward, I need to get myself over to the local TV studio and see what they can give me to do. Wish me luck!
Day Six: Staying in Action. Commencement. We each wrote down something we had taken from the week, and we had put it in a balloon. Then we threw the balloons into the center and took a different one. We popped that balloon and each took turns reading that person’s lesson of the week to the group. After graduation, we got together to do what Buckeyes do best...sing Carmen Ohio.
Day Seven refers to what we do after this, how we apply what we’ve learned, and how we achieve our vision and stay in action. I hope I can do that, but even after a week it is already hard. More to come...
My Family Cluster at Commencement
Day Five: Living and Leading with Integrity. We took some time to write down our values on paper t-shirts, and hang them up on a laundry line. Mine were respect, passion and determination, and openness. As I walked around the room, I saw many I hadn’t considered, such as family, spirituality, inner harmony, consistency, and honesty. We were then challenged with different moral situations, and had to stand by Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, or Strongly Disagree, where everyone could see us. Things like “It is okay to tell on a friend who cheated on a test,� or “ I would exaggerate my organization’s accomplishments on a resume.� It was interesting to see how people changed when the questions went from “It is okay...� to “I would...�, making it personal. Many thought it was ok to tell on a cheater, but wouldn’t do it themselves.
We then got to take some time to talk with small groups about issues of today that bother us...my group discussed civic responsibility, particularly among young people. It was so refreshing to hear the educated and passionate opinions from students just like me. I never get the chance to really sit down and openly discuss these things...it’s almost impossible with friends in a college setting...it was an incredible opportunity.
Day Four: Bringing Vision to Reality.
There’s one thing I really want to talk about from this day, and that is StarPower. This was my “ah-hah!� moment. It was a “simulation,� as they loved to call it, of real life and power. It started off as an innocent game of poker chip trading. We’d have some chips in our pocket, and each color was worth a different value. We’d walk around the room and make trades, but the only way you could do this is if you were clasping hands with the other person. Right off the bat, some people cheated by trading different chips than they had promised. Actually, it wasn’t cheating, it was completely following the rules, it just...wasn't fair. You didn’t know who you could trust. Hmm...sounds like life, doesn’t it?
After round one, they split us into 3 “classes� if you will, with the top class having gotten the most points, etc. I was in the top group. There weren’t very many of us, but we immediately formed a loyalty and decided to stick together (the other groups did the same). They then gave us 3 bonus chips, worth 3 points each, that we had to distribute amongst our group. This meant some people would miss out and inevitably be moved to a different class. After we did this, some people were moved up because they had more points, replacing some people within our group. We continued like this, more trading, more cheating, more shutting out other people because they weren’t from the “top� group, etc. At the last round, due to the bonus chip distribution, I got moved down to the middle group. I was bitter and devastated and reacted terribly. I couldn’t even concentrate on the rest of the game.
It wasn’t until the reaction that I saw the silliness of it all. People from the top group said everyone in the bottom group was lazy, people in the bottom group said everyone in the top group was a power-hungry cheater. This offended many. I had not cheated.
I really took a step back and saw how I reacted, and was shocked. I had gotten this emotional over power and being on top? Was this who I would be in the real world? More concerned with my high status and control than the people around me?
After this activity, there were tears and anger from many, until we got with our family clusters and really talked about what we had learned from the experience. A valuable yet painful lesson about ourselves and others.
Day Three: Challenging What Is, Looking to What Could Be. The day we’d all been afraid of, the day we have to come up with our visions.
We start the morning working in our clusters to see who can build the highest tower made of just balloons and tape in 20 minutes. This teamwork stuff was really killing me. But it was fun.
In the afternoon we played “Videry,� which was a game where we’d simulate factory work with a ball, trying to get the ball to everyone in the group over and over again in the most efficient way. This was about handling chaos and change...so every so often they’d start a “strike� of workers, or “fire� a person from our circle, or cause a “power outage� that caused us all to close our eyes. Considering I’m not a fan of chaos, we all worked very well as a team to adjust. It gives me hope that we could perhaps do this in real life.
The Guest Leader Forum was tonight...I can address that in another entry, but this day was a day where I really noticed the potential in students around me. It’s inspiring to connect with peers who have bright ideas for the future and intelligent questions that challenge the present.
Which brings me to the next event. Tomorrow’s Headlines was where we all wrote mini newspaper articles in marker on huge pieces of paper and stuck them around the room. These were supposed to be articles that would appear in the paper the day after our vision was realized. Then we all took some time to walk around the room and read them. It was amazing just to imagine the students around me making these visions come true, a hopeful glimpse into the future, a world without poverty and with health care and education for all and with equal rights and true diversity, the list goes on. And the students around me were going to make it happen.
FYI, my vision was to have the future of media be free from produced stereotypes, representing a broad cultural view of the world and its issues.
Playing Videry
My Family planning our Balloon Tower
Building our Tower
Almost done...
Our Finished Tower!
(2nd Place, but I'm convinced we deserved 1st)
Day Two: The Value of One, The Power of All. Physical challenges...ugh. Before the day even started, I was having flashbacks of gym class.
But it turned out interesting, to say the least. It was a series of difficult challenges we’d have to complete as a small team. Everyone had their personal “ah hah!� discovery moments of the week, this may have been it for some people, but it wasn’t mine quite yet. If anything, it showed how hard it was going to be during the week to communicate when all the leaders were trying to be...well...leaders.
Later, we took the DiSC personality test...One of those scientific ones people spend years on or something...each letter stands for something...I was a high D…...standing for Dominance. Oh goody. Ok, so at the time I wasn’t thrilled, but it’s just a leadership style, and it’s my leadership style, and in real life hopefully the styles of a group balance each other out. As the week went on, and with my family's encouragement, I definitely came to terms with my inner "D".
Ball Rolling Through Tubes Challenge...couldn't touch the ground
"The Cube" Challenge...we had to get everyone through it a different way
My group at "The Island" Challenge...we had to get across on planks without touching the water
"The Map" Challenge...navigating the map as a group
Me contributing to "The Puzzle" Challenge
Ok...LeaderShape...wow.
I’ve been putting these entries off, because I don’t think it can be put into words. But I’ll definitely try to make it as understandable as possible. I’ll also try to make this as short as possible, but I’m covering a heck of a lot of ground here.
Day One: Building Community. I came in reluctant and closed-minded. I forgot how hard it was meeting new people, or how much I hate not knowing what to expect. Of course, we had the obligatory ice breakers. On the wall, there were signs with “myths� and “truisms� of leadership. It’s a little blurry now, but one part expressed one of our weekly mottos; “Leaders aren’t born, they’re shaped.� So much for that excuse. Another favorite of mine was the point “Just because you’re a leader doesn’t mean you have all the answers.� I always think leaders have all the answers, but when I’m in their position, I realize how completely human they really are.
This day we met our “family clusters,� the group of 11 or so other students and an older facilitator who really would in fact become our family for the week. We were introduced to "reflection time," which was time to answer questions about ourselves and reflect on the day every night while we listened to Enya music or something very flowy-meditation-ish. This was already bound to be an interesting week.
Tomorrow (and by tomorrow I mean today) is LeaderShape. I’m not really sure what to expect, or if I’ll actually be any different a week from now. I’m also not sure if I can survive without a computer or other electronics for a week (their rule, not ours). Pretty much their driving us from OSU to a mysterious land and locking us up with no contact to the outside world.
Ok, not really. Newark is hardly a mysterious land. I’m starting to get a better idea of my “vision� (just in time). I’m thinking something along the lines of creating more media with cultural value and exposing world issues. That's something I might be able to apply to the university, which is a major point of the entire program.
I’ve been spending some time at the Digital Union at OSU (a much untapped resource), doing computer workshops and such. It’s pretty much a computer lab times 1000. I recommend checking it out—third floor of the Science and Engineering Library.
Anyway, what I’ve discovered so far is that they do a lot of pretty cool documentaries. I could see myself maybe doing that—I’d love to travel within my career.
I’ll keep posted as much as I can this week.
One more week as a first year...a bit sad, but it’s time to move onto bigger things (hopefully). I’m getting pretty pumped for summer. I’m doing this LeaderShape program through Ohio State...it’s all free, by application, at the Newark campus, starting like 3 days after I get home from finals week. It’s a 6-day “national institute,� and we’re one of 70 campuses that do it.
It sounds pretty hard-core, with everything scheduled to a tee, going 12 hours a day, but I’m into that kind of thing. We all have to come up with a “vision,� which I guess is just a big unrealistic dream we have that we’d like to see put into action. Then we all work together to help start putting these crazy ideas into action. Some LeaderShape Alumni include Google co-founder Larry Page, NFL quarterback Brian Griese, and ABC Family senior vice president of marketing John Rood...not a bad selling point.
I’m not sure about my vision right now. I’m thinking about something with seeing a change in media, whether that be more family-oriented and cultural media, or media (particularly television) with a more realistic view of the world, or perhaps less stereotypes represented in media. The thing is, none of these things really work together...at all. They are actually pretty contradictory.
Here’s the site: LeaderShape
I'll keep you updated!
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