UHP Leadership Team

1. Read through your essay responses from your application, particularly the question that asks specifically about your contributions to the Leadership Team. Reflect on how your goals and anticipated contributions compare to what you contributed this summer and at the UHP Ambassador retreat. What factored into your successes or challenges?     

   1. I said that I wanted to help with event management and logistical planning in my application. I was able to accomplish this as we just finished up our Ambassador Retreat. I feel like I did all the things I mentioned in my application. We planned a medium scale event and managed it throughout the day. It was quite a bit of work but it really paid off. I was excited to be able to put another event on my list and I cannot wait to see what the year has planned for me. I think one of the challenges was the timing. I had sorority recruitment so I had an extra long day which kind of sucked if I am being honest, but I still really enjoyed being a part of this experience and I loved getting to plan the day out. I feel like it was also hard because we had to plan over the summer. I think I would have done a date that was not welcome week just because some of the first year students may have reservations about going to the retreat if it interferes with any welcome events of any sort. I think what factored in to my challenges was how much I have going on. I am incredibly busy as a senior as I am a part of my sorority executive council, UHP, and I have two jobs as well. This can all be a lot and I had sorority recruitment the same week as the retreat so I had to make some scheduling adjustments which was a bit stressful, but ultimately, I am glad I did so because I had a great time at the retreat and it was nice to see my work come full circle alongside my officers that worked so hard on their end as well. 

2. What are your expectations for yourself in this role for the fall semester? What are some potential challenges you could face and how do you plan to work through them? Consider specifically your mentorship roles and continued leadership on UHP Ambassadors.

   1. My expectation for this role is to manage the sign ups that come our way and continue to speak highly of the program and encourage people to apply to be in the program and to become ambassadors. I think having enough time is a potential challenge but I think with everything already scheduled that will help me in making time for my responsibilities on the leadership team. I also plan on meeting with my mentor and trying to set them up for success for the next year, I want them to feel welcome and included and I want to be as approachable as possible so that if they have any questions, I can assist and answer them. My mentee ended up not staying as an ambassador but I still would like to be there to support them, whatever that looks like. Another thing I think I would like to do in the fall semester is curate more stuff for the UHP guide that I started. I think that this could be a living document and that I could add as need be to it. I think I want to put in more specific events that we do in the honors program at Uc instead of using broad terms. I think this would be helpful and that people would find it useful if they knew the structure of the event that they are hosting, especially if they are a first year ambassador and have not had the chance to go to any of the events.

Reflection 2

1. I think the greatest strengths of the Leadership Team would be that there are different departments that allow us as students to hone in on one topic or thing rather than everything all at once. I was really interested in doing an event and being able to do that and learn from those experiences was a great opportunity. I think some of the challenges that I have faced are definitely my availability. I have been incredibly busy this semester with sorority and several other personal things and I have not had the time that I thought I would. I am finally starting to have some time freed up in my schedule but I still cannot attend many events. I also do not know what to do at this stage in my position since my event has been planned. I do not have any mentee so I do not meet with anyone often but I feel like I will enjoy the game night that is coming up next week. I think the expectations on the leadership team are good. I just think that with the different departments there could be more room for collaboration and stuff like that. I also think that while I do enjoy all the updates about everything going on with the honors program, I feel like I am literally getting emails everyday and I cannot always tell if they are important or not. I also have had an issue with outlook sending emails to the right folder which can be frustrating but I have figured that out luckily. I feel like I have personally contributed a bit to the leadership team. I think we started a guide for how to recruit better and to help ambassadors to know what to say. I hope that the document will be updated and stuff so that people can continue to use it as a resource over the years. I think we took a new approach to the retreat and made it community and recruitment based which helped with people’s questions and concerns they had in the beginning. I am satisfied with my work but I always feel that there is more to be done. I feel like the guide could definitely have more done to it and I think preparing a laundry list of ideas for the retreat next year to get the ball rolling with planning could also help. Maybe the feedback survey will provide context for what we need to do for next year or what we skipped this year possibly. As I said before, I feel like time has been a main factor in terms of challenges for this semester. I have wanted to show up to events but have always been busy during them and had classes and stuff like that. I have also been very active with my sorority and am beginning to plan the next part of my life. I am applying for a competitive internship with my sorority, Kappa Delta, which has been at the forefront of my mind this semester on top of personal challenges. I have had a friend that has been struggling mentally and emotionally that I had to actually leave and stop being friends with because it was affecting me too much. I have been managing everything by coming in an hour or so before my classes and collecting my thoughts so that I have a clear head for class and so that I get the hard stuff out of the way earlier in the day so I have later in the evening to rest and relax from the day. I have also decided that I will no longer work in my room, as it was becoming hard to sleep and I viewed it more as a workplace. I have set boundaries for myself and decided that I do not need to work on things everyday and have learned to pace out my work with my personal goals. I think people view the leadership team as something extra to do and something to pursue if you are passionate about leading and mentoring in an education environment. However, I do not think a lot of people actually know who we are or what exactly we do. I know that we have an ambassadors page but maybe an email when everyone is selected that is sent out to everyone so we know that others know us and maybe if someone is encouraged to apply that they reach out to us. One thing I think would definitely benefit UHP is like a semester general body meeting. I think making this a requirement and having the  leadership team supervise and lead it could be helpful. I think doing this towards the end of every semester would be great because it would provide a way for everyone to meet up in places like TUC Great Hall or somewhere central on campus and celebrate everything that we do throughout the year. I think that making it required would also help with people keeping us in their head that aren't super active in the program.

Reflection 3

1. Personal: Looking back on the last year of work, what has stood out as the contribution you are most proud of within the Leadership Team? How have you grown as a leader? In what ways were you challenged in this role, and how did you overcome those obstacles? I planned the Ambassador Retreat over the summer for August. I feel like this is my biggest accomplishment because I got the opportunity to event manage and to work alongside other ambassadors to create an awesome experience for our ambassadors. I feel like this provided the opportunity for them to become more of a community rather than just a group of honors students. Even if it was just for a day, I feel like we got a lot done and we also helped break down a lot of elements of being an ambassador for our team. I did a packet and presentation on recruitment during the presentation. I got to talk about what recruiting is like and why your personal image matters when you are trying to recruit for a program, especially on a college campus. I think that this was an informative session and that hopefully students took something away from it so they could recruit better! I feel like I have grown as a leader because I really had to take initiative to try and plan the retreat. There were a couple things I really wanted to do and everyone was agreeable to the ideas I brought to the table which was nice. I had to learn how to delegate tasks, especially since I could only be there for part of the day because I had sorority recruitment on the same day. I had to learn a lot about balancing a lot at one time especially during the summer and at the beginning of the year. I feel like I was also just dealing with a lot as I finished up my junior year and started my senior year. I had to figure out what I wanted to do as a job and what I wanted my career to be in. I finally got a better job halfway through the year and have been enjoying it so far! Overall, it was a hard year but I learned a lot about myself and grew into my leadership positions better and transitioned into a real job!

2. Team: With next year's Leadership Team structure changing completely, what are you most excited about for the team? If it was up to you, what would you have done differently this year in terms of team structure, and what would you want to implement moving forward? I am most excited about the team dynamic. I think it will be awesome to see how the team interacts with one another and see how they plan events since it is quite smaller than this year’s Leadership Team. The only thing I would have probably done differently is try to be there more. I was incredibly busy and showed up to do what I could but I wish I could have been more involved because I like talking to students and I enjoy our campus. However, I was finishing up an executive leader term in my sorority and had a lot of awesome times being an RA at Calhoun. That beginning part of the year was incredibly busy but we made it through. I also wish I would have enjoyed it more. I had a hard time enjoying it because I was so stressed out which is something I was not expecting to happen because I was taking so few classes but it caught up to me. I do love my team that I worked with, they were all amazing people and matched my personality well I think.