Summer 2011: Done and Done

Summer 2011 is ovah!!

Originally, I was supposed to be taking three courses:

Marketing for Nonprofits
Program Planning
Self-Exploration Through Creative Writing

The first two were supposed to are mentored courses. The third course was an online course through Prescott and happened to be taught by the same person who was going to mentor my Program Planning course. But it didn't work out, so I only took Marketing and Creative Writing and bumped the now Program Planning and Evaluation course to Spring 2012.

I would like to thank Abbie Fink of hmaPR for being a great marketing mentor. She was teaching two other classes for ASU (one online, one in-person) at the time. As well as doing her day job on top of that! Wonder Woman, she was. I learned so much from her:

The most valuable lesson I gleaned from this course was the importance of research: the market, the target audience, the competition, and the different methods in which to reach the public. In addition, I was required to dig a little deeper for a SWOT analysis and discovered that a strength can be considered a weakness, and vice versa. The book review I conducted of Kivi Leroux Miller's "Nonprofit Marketing Guide" provided additional helpful information for nonprofits with small or nonexistent budgets. Based on what I learned, I was able to produce a workable marketing plan that I can implement within my own organization.

As with all my mentors, I hope to do justice to their teachings by applying/implementing them in my own organization. Out of all the creative writing courses I've taken, this one was the best and I am so glad that Susan Vespoli taught it this way:

The one thing I've discovered about the various creative writing courses I've taken over the years is that the syllabus doesn't change: students read the work of authors, answer questions about their work, and write a paper. I feel like I never learn anything new, that the teacher is just following a curriculum designed by every other school in the country. This course followed the same pattern, to a certain point. I enjoyed being reintroduced to Maya Angelou, the tears and little hairs that arose when I read Martin Luther King Jr's speech, the poem where the author felt connected to her African heritage, and writing my first superhero poem. The main aspect I liked the most was the incorporation of "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron.

This course forced me to dig below the surface and raised issues and emotions that I had to deal with. My expectations for this course was to find my writing groove again and start a regular writing routine. While I did maintain a regular writing routine, I discovered that any "productive" writing will have to wait until I've completed school. I was able to understand the kind of writer I am and come to terms with the fact that I can't be like every other writer out there. I'm just me.

As a writer, I've been meaning to add Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way to my collection of writing-related books, but it always slipped my mind. Finally, I had a reason to buy it, just for the simple fact that it was required reading. And I thoroughly enjoyed it and the experience! I hope to try and incorporate that somehow into the programs at TWZ.

Now it's time to say goodbye...take a short 8-day break...and then jump into Fall 2011 for Board Governance and Strategic Planning.