Hey everyone! This past week was the second part of our three part orientation at The Center of Excellence in Jackson, Mississippi. The major purpose of this event was really to come together as a team and set some goals for the coming academic year.
Jeremy, Esteban, and I arrived Wednesday. Unfortunately, Sarah had class so late in the day that she did not get there until midnight and Tameka had to finish up some things at school before meeting us the next morning. The day ended up just being a time for us to hang out, relax, and work on our Honors Study Topic speeches.
The orientation officially began at 8am on Thursday morning. We left for The Center of Excellence and we given a brief lesson on podium etiquette. We also randomly chose the order in which we would be giving our speeches before Headquarters' staff. Speeches began at nine and was, by far, the part of the Orientation that the team was most nervous about. The purpose of the exercise was the practice of giving our speech in front of another group and to have them recorded for the Competitive Edge. Look for it soon! :-)
Following our speeches, the International Officers met with Luke Davis for exercises in Team Dynamics. After about an hour, we took a break for lunch and then returned for another hour of discussion. Part of the exercise was to write up a "review" about our other team members. We have not yet seen the result of that exercise but, truthfully, I am a little nervous about it.
We then had a meeting with Courtney Taylor for constructive feedback on our speeches following filming with Tom Rowden. A lot of what we did was for C4 and next year's International Convention. I'm excited to see the result of the filming!
After a brief update on the organizational priorities, we departed for dinner with Dr. Risley and headquarters staff. A lot of the discussion was surrounding college completion. The dinner ended at around 10:00pm so was closely followed by bed.
Friday was another busy day accompanied with some bad news. Because of Hurricane Irene, my flights were moved to Saturday. Knowing that I would be leaving a day early was a bummer but we adjusted some of the schedule so it made me feel a little better. We began the day with a meeting of the Speaker's Bureau where we were given organizational updates and our fall travel schedule! I am very excited to share that I will be going to New York's October Regional meeting and New Jersey's. Looking forward to my first Regional meetings :-)
The Speaker's Bureau meeting was followed by a look a the new website to be launched in September and lunch. We then discussed our responsibilities while at Regional meetings and did some role playing surrounding things that could occur at these meetings and how to handle them.
By the time we were finished, there was some time to relax before going to dinner. We had our last team dinner of the semester and spent the rest of the night (until about 2 am discussing our goals). Because they have not been finalized, I am not planning on sharing them in this entry but we discussed everything from trying to get more one star level chapters to our interaction with the chapters and how we could contribute to C4.
Saturday morning was tough. As everybody else was getting ready for the last day of Orientation, I was packing to head home. My flight was leaving at 11:50am so I left the Center of Excellence for the airport around 11 after having breakfast with my team and discussing with Monika and Jennifer some of the goals that we had come up with. I can't tell you much about the last day for everybody else, just what was on the agenda - rehearing the headquarters update and various workshops and discussing how to make each of them interactive.
I was back with my team again at about 10:00pm my time for the dinner meeting with Dr. Risley to discuss our team goal ideas. It was extremely difficult to be on speaker phone for something that everybody else was able to be present for but I was grateful to my team, Dr. Risley, and Monika for making sure that I was there in some way and giving me the chance to participate. You can't always predict the things that may go wrong.
Anyway, I'll give you all an update once our goals are finalized :-) Any input you have between now and then or if there is anything else that we can do to help, be sure to let us know. All of our e-mail addresses are posted at ptk.org or you can easily find any of us around Facebook.
Until next time!
Danielle Swartz
Location:Jackson, Mississippi
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