“We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them”
― Albert Einstein
This week our lesson on problem solving with individuals was led by Sebastian and Brad! I thought they did a great job of highlighting the main points of the chapter and applying them in ways that will be practical to potential situations we will encounter next fall as peer mentors.
We were asked to think about the differences between positive and negative goals and how we might apply those as peer mentors. It got me thinking about a workshop I attended earlier this week that focused on SMART goal setting (that was a breeze and the leader of the group was impressed that I knew all about it) and then small wins vs. small losses. That was a new concept, but one that I am readily embracing! I'll explain it so maybe you can utilize them as a peer mentor, too!
Here's how it works.
Basically, a small win is like a mini-step within a SMART goal. Say you wake up tomorrow morning and you say to yourself, "I have to go to my Econ class today." Although this isn't a huge goal, completing it successfully will help contribute to a larger pattern of wins, a positive and achievable step toward the overarching goal, that is, for example, "I want to improve my Econ score by ten points on the next exam."
A small loss is the opposite. Small losses are negative steps that deter from a larger goal. For example, "I'm not going to my Econ class today," is a small loss. This decision hurts the larger goal you are trying to achieve. On top of that, when small losses add up, they tend to make you feel very inadequate and unsuccessful. You may start to anticipate failure instead of success and become even less motivated to put effort into your work.
Moral of the story is this, those small decisions you make each and every day contribute to how you reach your larger goals and how you feel about the direction of your life and work. Hopefully this will be helpful (or at least interesting) to some of you! I just find it to be an easy way to take steps toward your goals in a measurable way on a daily basis!
See you all in class!!
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Sunday, February 17, 2013
The Flip Side!
“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.”
-Charles Dickens
This week I got to be on the flip side of recitation when Katie and I led our very first seminar! I must say that once we got there, I was not nearly as nervous as I thought I might be! It was really nice to have had the lesson plans figured out in advance and to have feedback from Chelsee and Allie! For those of you still planning--definitely take full advantage of their advice because it is super helpful!!
So, this week's topic was helping relationships and interpersonal communication. The text, Students Helping Students, names some characteristics of a helping relationship that are very insightful. I think the list does a really good job of highlighting skills in a way that helped me understand the skills I already have and those I need to further develop I think that the characteristics that stick out to me as ones I have the most experience with are communication and interaction, feelings, and collaborative effort. These are the most familiar to me because of activities that I have been involved in (or am currently involved in). I have have a lot of communication experience (as a journalism major, that's shocking, I know) and I feel that being empathetic of other's feelings comes pretty naturally to me. As a tutor, I know that the best way to make progress in many situations is to have every individual making an effort, so collaboration is key for helping relationships to take place. It's all about the give and take!
Skills that I feel I need to pay more attention to are making sure I'm approachable and secure, showing a clear structure, and helping produce change. For me, these are the most difficult aspects of a helping relationship. I find that I sometimes get sidetracked by my own problems, and that's not an option in a helping relationship. I know I said in class that I won't talk to someone who I feel is struggling with personal problems because I don't want to compound their stress by adding my problems to theirs. This being said, I want to make sure that I keep and problems I may have completely separate from those helping relationships. A clear structure is also a little difficult for me to follow, but that is mostly because I tend to find tangents in conversation and get off topic. This can be avoided if I make a conscious effort to focus on the problem at hand, an that will help my efforts more effectively produce change as well!
I had a lot of fun at the retreat today! See you all in class on Wednesday!
-Charles Dickens
This week I got to be on the flip side of recitation when Katie and I led our very first seminar! I must say that once we got there, I was not nearly as nervous as I thought I might be! It was really nice to have had the lesson plans figured out in advance and to have feedback from Chelsee and Allie! For those of you still planning--definitely take full advantage of their advice because it is super helpful!!
So, this week's topic was helping relationships and interpersonal communication. The text, Students Helping Students, names some characteristics of a helping relationship that are very insightful. I think the list does a really good job of highlighting skills in a way that helped me understand the skills I already have and those I need to further develop I think that the characteristics that stick out to me as ones I have the most experience with are communication and interaction, feelings, and collaborative effort. These are the most familiar to me because of activities that I have been involved in (or am currently involved in). I have have a lot of communication experience (as a journalism major, that's shocking, I know) and I feel that being empathetic of other's feelings comes pretty naturally to me. As a tutor, I know that the best way to make progress in many situations is to have every individual making an effort, so collaboration is key for helping relationships to take place. It's all about the give and take!
Skills that I feel I need to pay more attention to are making sure I'm approachable and secure, showing a clear structure, and helping produce change. For me, these are the most difficult aspects of a helping relationship. I find that I sometimes get sidetracked by my own problems, and that's not an option in a helping relationship. I know I said in class that I won't talk to someone who I feel is struggling with personal problems because I don't want to compound their stress by adding my problems to theirs. This being said, I want to make sure that I keep and problems I may have completely separate from those helping relationships. A clear structure is also a little difficult for me to follow, but that is mostly because I tend to find tangents in conversation and get off topic. This can be avoided if I make a conscious effort to focus on the problem at hand, an that will help my efforts more effectively produce change as well!
I had a lot of fun at the retreat today! See you all in class on Wednesday!
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Cultural Proficiency Brought to us by Easten!
“Peace is not unity in similarity but unity in diversity, in the comparison and conciliation of
differences.”
-Mikhail Gorbachev
Another week of spring semester has now flown by! We have arrived at the time of the semester when peer mentors will begin planning and teaching part of each week's seminar and I was very happy to learn from none other than Easten this week!
The focus of this week was on cultural diversity and I thought that Easten did a fantastic job of incorporating material from the book into the class activities. One of his main points was that we need to be empathetic, not sympathetic, to other people's situations. The "All my neighbors activity" was great because it really helped demonstrate the similarities we all have as peer mentors and how we are each unique!
I thought the sheet we filled out with our unique cultural influences was a great way to wrap up the seminar because it gave us a chance to reflect and piece everything together! I realized that we all have very diverse influences but that makes us a much stronger group. We have varied perspectives on different issues and we have a lot that we can learn from each other by keeping an open mind. Open-mindedness will be essential as a peer mentor too because our students will have unique experiences that have shaped them!
Since Katie and I are leading seminar on helping relationships next week, I thought this was a really great step in our learning! I can see now how all the topics in the text are starting to weave together and I'm really excited to see what my fellow peer mentors have in store for lesson plans!
I'm looking forward to this week! It was a really great learning process to put together a lesson plan and then have it critiqued! I think that tweaks we made are good and I hope you all learn something and enjoy class on Wednesday!!
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Life of an ESFP!
"There are three things extemely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self." -Benjamin Franklin
(Yes, another Ben Franklin quote....)
After a week of looking forward to my results, I could not be happier with the class and the analysis of my MBTI results! I truly find this assessment to be a great personal learning tool and just plain interesting as well!
So, I'm an ESFP, but in some cases just barely.
I'm about a 26 for extroversion, not shocking to me at all! I'm that person who gets antsy sitting in a room by myself, I am the definition of a people person!
As for sensing, I come in around 14. The subcategory that lowered by sensing results was an out of preference characteristic for original over traditional. I guess that makes sense to me as I read the descriptions, especially "like being original and different, but not so much as to be out of the mainstream."
I had one big of preference characteristics for feeling, leaving me in the slight preference. I was shocked to see that my feeling preference wasn't very high, but the questioning category falls under thinking vs. feeling, and I am most definitely a questioner! I continually find myself becoming frustrated if I can't get a straightforward answer to help me understand a situation or a problem so it's good to know that is a part of my personality. In addition, these results equip me with advice about how to avoid those frustrations! Hallelujah!
So perceiving, yeah turns out that fits me pretty well, until you get to emergent vs. methodical. I am VERY methodical. Although I love to have some flexibility in my plans, I HAVE to know when things will get done and have an active plan to get them done. The description "see routine as helpful in your work life but find it confining at home--or vice versa" is a perfect one for me! I have to have a plan for my academic/professional life, but my personal life is a very relaxed, go with the flow atmosphere that allows me to decompress!
My results say that ESFP's are most satisfied in a work environment that is friendly, realistic, flexible and action-oriented. I'm pretty sure those exact words appear on some journalism job descriptions, so that really helps me understand why journalism is such an appealing career to me.
In closing, the phrase in my entire results booklet describing ESFP's that I loved the most was "their attitude is that life is to be lived now, not analyzed," so I'm off to finish my Superbowl Sunday doing just that!
(Yes, another Ben Franklin quote....)
After a week of looking forward to my results, I could not be happier with the class and the analysis of my MBTI results! I truly find this assessment to be a great personal learning tool and just plain interesting as well!
So, I'm an ESFP, but in some cases just barely.
I'm about a 26 for extroversion, not shocking to me at all! I'm that person who gets antsy sitting in a room by myself, I am the definition of a people person!
As for sensing, I come in around 14. The subcategory that lowered by sensing results was an out of preference characteristic for original over traditional. I guess that makes sense to me as I read the descriptions, especially "like being original and different, but not so much as to be out of the mainstream."
I had one big of preference characteristics for feeling, leaving me in the slight preference. I was shocked to see that my feeling preference wasn't very high, but the questioning category falls under thinking vs. feeling, and I am most definitely a questioner! I continually find myself becoming frustrated if I can't get a straightforward answer to help me understand a situation or a problem so it's good to know that is a part of my personality. In addition, these results equip me with advice about how to avoid those frustrations! Hallelujah!
So perceiving, yeah turns out that fits me pretty well, until you get to emergent vs. methodical. I am VERY methodical. Although I love to have some flexibility in my plans, I HAVE to know when things will get done and have an active plan to get them done. The description "see routine as helpful in your work life but find it confining at home--or vice versa" is a perfect one for me! I have to have a plan for my academic/professional life, but my personal life is a very relaxed, go with the flow atmosphere that allows me to decompress!
My results say that ESFP's are most satisfied in a work environment that is friendly, realistic, flexible and action-oriented. I'm pretty sure those exact words appear on some journalism job descriptions, so that really helps me understand why journalism is such an appealing career to me.
In closing, the phrase in my entire results booklet describing ESFP's that I loved the most was "their attitude is that life is to be lived now, not analyzed," so I'm off to finish my Superbowl Sunday doing just that!
Learning Communities Mid-Year Institute & ISLE
“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”
-Benjamin Franklin
On Friday (aka the busiest day in existence...) I attended two afternoon sessions at the Learning Communities Mid-Year Institute.
The first session I attended was called "Call, Tweet, Post, or Text--Using social and alternative media to build a community" led by Lindsey LaMair and Rachel Peller. This session discussed how utilizing different forms of social media can strengthen group interactions. One thing that I found interesting about the session was examples of different ways of using social media sites that I hadn't thought of for groups before. Specifically, the presenters talked about using Pinterest to facilitate a group discussion on how women are portrayed in media images. I found this unique, although it obviously applies to some groups better than others.
The second session that I attended was titled "Making a Mentor-Driven Learning Community" with Chris Jacobs and Krista Klocke. Although there were only four people in the audience (myself included), I found this session to be both informative and wonderfully interactive. As freshman honors program mentors, the speakers had both worked with groups to create a unique theme for the semester (i.e. spys, Disney, Harry Potter, etc.). I thought a similar idea could be used to unify Hixson recitation sections. A theme gives a group both a sense of unity and uniqueness so I would be interested to see how that would work for Hixson scholars!
On Saturday, I attended ISLE and I found it to be a very fun experience! I ended up staying all day! The opening keynote speaker, Dr. Darin Eich sent a good message with his "root down and branch out" philosophy on leadership in college. The first session I attended was "Maximizing Leadership Potential" with Rachel Owen. This session turned out to be mostly about marketing your skills, so it didn't apply to peer mentoring as much as I had hoped, but I did learn how I can better portray myself to potential employers! The second session I attended (after a nice lunch with fellow Hixsons!) was "Say Whaaa?" with Andrea Ramos and Jeni Roberts. This session made me really aware of how the words I say can greatly influence how others feel. That's really important to keep in mind as a peer mentor so I will definitely remember that advice and information moving forward! The final session I attended was "Emotional Intelligence: How to Understand Yourself and Others" with Amy Fitzjarrald. This session related to the previous session really well! It made me realize the difference between intent and impact in the messages we send to others, even in general comments. One thing that I wish the speaker would have focused on more was the Johari window idea, maybe someone who attended that session can fill me in??
All in all, it was a very informational couple of days and I picked up a few ideas that will come in handy this fall for sure!!
-Benjamin Franklin
On Friday (aka the busiest day in existence...) I attended two afternoon sessions at the Learning Communities Mid-Year Institute.
The first session I attended was called "Call, Tweet, Post, or Text--Using social and alternative media to build a community" led by Lindsey LaMair and Rachel Peller. This session discussed how utilizing different forms of social media can strengthen group interactions. One thing that I found interesting about the session was examples of different ways of using social media sites that I hadn't thought of for groups before. Specifically, the presenters talked about using Pinterest to facilitate a group discussion on how women are portrayed in media images. I found this unique, although it obviously applies to some groups better than others.
The second session that I attended was titled "Making a Mentor-Driven Learning Community" with Chris Jacobs and Krista Klocke. Although there were only four people in the audience (myself included), I found this session to be both informative and wonderfully interactive. As freshman honors program mentors, the speakers had both worked with groups to create a unique theme for the semester (i.e. spys, Disney, Harry Potter, etc.). I thought a similar idea could be used to unify Hixson recitation sections. A theme gives a group both a sense of unity and uniqueness so I would be interested to see how that would work for Hixson scholars!
On Saturday, I attended ISLE and I found it to be a very fun experience! I ended up staying all day! The opening keynote speaker, Dr. Darin Eich sent a good message with his "root down and branch out" philosophy on leadership in college. The first session I attended was "Maximizing Leadership Potential" with Rachel Owen. This session turned out to be mostly about marketing your skills, so it didn't apply to peer mentoring as much as I had hoped, but I did learn how I can better portray myself to potential employers! The second session I attended (after a nice lunch with fellow Hixsons!) was "Say Whaaa?" with Andrea Ramos and Jeni Roberts. This session made me really aware of how the words I say can greatly influence how others feel. That's really important to keep in mind as a peer mentor so I will definitely remember that advice and information moving forward! The final session I attended was "Emotional Intelligence: How to Understand Yourself and Others" with Amy Fitzjarrald. This session related to the previous session really well! It made me realize the difference between intent and impact in the messages we send to others, even in general comments. One thing that I wish the speaker would have focused on more was the Johari window idea, maybe someone who attended that session can fill me in??
All in all, it was a very informational couple of days and I picked up a few ideas that will come in handy this fall for sure!!
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