Done and Done...I survived Spring 2011

The spring semester was officially over last Friday, the 6th. I received A's in both of my classes. Thank you to Shoshana Ross, Volunteer Coordinator at Free Arts AZ for mentoring my Volunteer Management course, and Chantal Sheehan, Exec. Dir. of New Global Citizens for mentoring my Human Relations course. They were so great and I learned so much. With Shoshana, I came away with a Volunteer Management Plan I can utilize and with Chantal, I learned about the different parts of HR. As part of the evaluation process, I had to evaluate myself and then my mentors had to evaluate me. A couple of things Shoshana said stood out for me. One of them was that I "...sought more structure, details and examples than necessary...".

She also said:

"...My one critique would be to encourage Ms. Colston to be more self-sufficient and self-starting in her work, as would be necessary were she to pursue a career in this field. Ms. Colston is very capable and needs simply to have faith in her own ability to craft projects/blurbs/whatnot on her own, utilizing her own skills and creativity..."

In my defense I cry INSTITUTIONALIZED. This type of experiential learning environment is frowned upon in public schools. LOL. I have way more freedom than I'm used to and, despite the fact that I've been in this program for nearly 3 years, it's apparent that I can't shake the whole public school structure thing. It's also the fact that I'm learning something new. I only know the NP sector from a volunteer standpoint. I keep feeling that there's a wrong way and a right way to do things. What I'm slowly learning is that I don't have to reinvent the wheel. If it's already out there, why start over? I can just take from all sources and tweak it to fit my needs.

As for her comment about simply having faith in my ability, she is spot on. I've heard that before from my best friend and I'm going to have to be honest and say I don't know where that comes from. It's not like I had a bad childhood where I was verbally or physically abused. Quite the contrary. I had a great childhood and I love hanging out with my parents. When I was younger, I had a lisp and stuttered. Not as bad as Mel Tillis, but it made me self-conscious to the point where I didn't do a lot of talking. I no longer have the lisp and I don't stutter as much, but I occasionally stumble over some words. I was better at communicating on paper than verbally, which is probably why I became a writer.And kept diaries. And write blogs.


Maybe once I see the light at the end of this educational tunnel (4 more semesters to go!) and have a better grasp of the NP sector, I'll grow into self-starting and self-sufficiency.

Maybe once I have a better handle on my idea, what my community needs, and I start to feel that TWZ will really happen, I'll just grow into"faith in my abilities."

I think I have to feel passionate about what I'm doing to be there, to feel/know any of that. And right now, I'm just not there.

Yet.

NOTE: I'm still looking for mentors for the Fall 2011-Summer 2012 semesters. See here for more details.