AWW GT!

Those memes that show people dancing like crazy people at 8am? Thats my life for the first six weeks of the summer the past two years as an Orientation Mentor. Last year, I thought my love for being an Orientation Mentor could not grow stronger, but at the end of my second season of Orientation, I can say I proved myself wrong. This year I was student mentor for the Pepper Team. This meant I was a flex team, and helped students with advising in different college locations every day. I also held a leadership position this year in Orientation being a Central Stage Director with two other mentors. The three of us worked together in the month leading up to Orientation to write Central Stage and brainstorm what we wanted our vision to look like. Central Stage is a portion of Orientation where we offer students and supporters a fun performance and highlight different resources on campus and bits of campus culture.

Orientation offers me leadership development in so many arenas. I get the opportunity to expand my public speaking skills through giving daily hour-long presentation about academic requirements and speaking in a microphone on stage in front of 600 people every day. I am able to share my experiences as a CMU student and connect with students in order to help answer the questions and calm them with their nervousness of starting a new journey. I am able to connect with the professional staff that work Orientation and learn from them. I love this job, and I love the memories it gives me. I love seeing students make friends in my teams each day, and I love seeing them get excited about what their time at CMU will bring.

Orientation gives me a glow and confidence that few other things do. I have an incredibly strong support system from the other mentors, and I form some of my strongest friendships. Orientation staff is like family. This summer I am continuing to work as mentor for Transfer Orientations, and I will be ending my time at CMU next summer, the same way I started it, with Freshman Orientation, it just looks a little different for me this time around.

Detroit Service Trip LEAD team, try number 2

My freshman year, my cohort of LAS went on a service trip to Detroit where we received education about Detroit and served the community. This year I was on the LEAD team for the Detroit Service Trip for the freshman cohort of LAS. This meant I was able to participate in the experience and facilitate reflections with a small group of students. This experience had some differences from my freshman year, and I have grown a lot and am different too. It is because of these differences that I was able to learn so much and be impacted so heavily by the experience.

One of the biggest things that I took away this time was how aware I was of the gentrification that is occurring in Detroit. On the first day of the trip, we spent some time with Quicken Loans and took a historic tour of Detroit. During the tour, we learned about the housing barriers that have been placed on people of color and the systemic racism that has driven many decisions that have been made in the city. Decisions that were made not that long ago, have had immense effects on communities of color. After the day, I was eager to get into reflection because of the impact the tour. It was fulfilling to hear and see students response to the tour and the amount they learned. They were able to connect the dots in how power and privilege can lead to groups being oppressed. The next day we served with CASS. The group I was with worked on recycling paper. I helped sort paper before it went to be shredded.

This experience was an amazing one that gave me the opportunity to help members of the freshman cohort reflect and grow from their experience, and it gave me the opportunity to learn and grow myself.

Seasons of Service

Throughout my time at CMU, one of my favorite things I have been involved in is the Alternative Breaks Program (AB). The AB program provides students with issue education, service, and reflection with social justice issues through weekend and weeklong breaks that travel to different communities and assist them with whatever the community says they need. We are there to serve the communities.

When thinking about what the AB program means to me the one word I can use to describe it is community. The community comes from both the service we do with our community partners and the people that you meet.  The people that I have met through this program have become some of my best friends and support systems. The support doesn’t stop with just things occurring within the AB program but has brought me people and support that stretches outside of the AB web. I have gotten so much support in trying to figure out my professional goals and what I want to do with my life while also supporting any personal struggles I have faced while at CMU.  One of my friendships from AB, Shannon Dent, and I even made a remix to the song “Seasons of Love” about how much we love AB and Board. I wouldn’t trade our Thursday evening meetings for anything. These friendships all developed because of the sense of community and the conversations that Alternative Breaks starts. You are surrounded by people who have similar values to you and genuinely care about the people around them. Through office hours, long van rides, and service you gain the opportunity to be completely yourself and be extremely goofy at times and incredibly intentional at others. When going through an experience of growth with other people you create a bond with them that sparks that friendship and support, and I cannot imagine my time at CMU without the community that AB has helped build. It is because of the growth and community that the Alternative Breaks program has given me that I applied to be a part of the Alternative Breaks Advisory Board. This year, I was able to serve as a Site and Service Development Chair  (SSD) and a Site Leader and Orientation Chair (SLOT).

Through my involvement with Alternative Breaks this year I grew an immense amount in my knowledge of both the program and social justice. As an SSD I was given the task of planning the weeklong service experiences. This meant finding service and housing, writing Site Agreements, receiving Insurance from community partners, and making loads upon loads of phone calls. One of my favorite aspects of Alternative Breaks is the community partners we work with. I love being able to interact with them and learn from them. On all of my AB experiences I have been able to form connections and learn about different ways people are working toward social justice. As a Winter SSD during first semester, I had the opportunity to learn more about the community partners we work with beyond the scope of the ABs I have participated on and connect with them.

This year I also had an opportunity to experience the work that SLOT does.  SLOTs role is to train and prepare site leaders to lead their weeklong and weekend service experiences. This included writing trainings, writing weekly newsletters, and presenting trainings to site leaders. I was able to learn how important the role is to support site leaders and help them feel prepared to site lead their Alternative Break. I know for me through my site leading experience the time leading up to the break can be stressful, and I know I felt inadequate within my role at times. I utilized SLOT at those times and was able to have a resource to help me feel prepared. I was grateful to be able to use my experience to help prepare site leaders to have a successful, intentional, and growing experience while on their AB.

This program has helped me realize how strong my passion for social justice is, and it has helped me better understand the intersectionality of social justice issues and the importance of being an active citizen. I am extremely excited to complete my final year at CMU as a member of the AB Board as a returning SSD, and I am excited to continue to connect with community partners.

 

The Saddest Cancelled Trip in History (not to be dramatic)

Last year I had to the privilege of going on the LAS in the D trip with my freshman cohort.  As members of LAS we serve on a LEAD team, and I was super excited when I found out I would be returning to Detroit as a member of the LAS in the D lead team.  As a facilitator of the Detroit Service Trip I would get the responsibility of being paired with another member of the LEAD team to help facilitate a group of freshman.

Through planning this trip, the LEAD team was getting really excited because we were working with our three LEAD team co-chairs to help them make the trip the best and most service and education oriented trip yet.  We had a chance to meet with the freshman who were going to be in our groups for the week to do pre-trip reflections to get their minds in the right mindset to learn and help foster change. Things were looking great, and we were ready to go.

But, weather in Michigan does not always let us get what we want.  The Thursday before the trip we found out the Detroit Service Trip had to be cancelled due to weather.  This was extremely shocking and disappointing. I was not only sad that I would not get to experience and grow from this trip, but I was also sad that there was a cohort of freshman who would not get to have the eye-opening experience that I had the year before.

Out of this happening I learned mostly that there are things out of our control.  I had my time to be bummed, but there are ways to learn outside of going on this service trip that I should embrace.  Others may not have been able to go on the exact trip I did as a freshman, but in that in no way means I cannot encourage others to take initiative and try to educate themselves.  I hope next year I get the opportunity to serve on the Detroit Service Trip LEAD team, so I can help make the difference I want.

Which one is the Mentor?

As a member of LAS, during my sophomore year I mentor one of the members of LAS in the freshman cohort.  I had the absolute privilege of having Julie Martin as my mentee.  I have a great relationship with my mentor, Stephanie, and I was worried that my relationship with Julie was not going to be as strong.  I felt like I still relied on Steph a lot, and was nervous that I was not going to be ready for a mentee of my own.  Despite these initial fears,  I did know that I had a lot of love for CMU to share and I was going to be able to care for my mentee and help them with whatever I was able to.

From the start, I started learning more from Julie than I think she even knows.  Even as a freshman entering college,  I have never met a stronger human.  With all of the stress and things that were thrown her way from the very beginning of her college career, Julie showed the ultimate definition of maturity in handling everything.  I have never met a person in my life who can truly take a situation and look at it from every side the way Julie does.  Her strength does not even begin to compare for her heart.  Through getting to know Julie, I have learned that she has the biggest heart of anyone I have ever met.  This is what makes Julie such an amazing leader.  She cares about the people around her and making them grow.  She is the definition of authenticity and servant leadership because she is putting everyone around her first, but she does not lose who she is in the process.  When I am around Julie, I want to be a better leader.

One of the ways I have grown in terms of my leadership skills with Julie is my communication skills.  I have learned to ask what she needed. Feedback is a large part of being successful in any capacity, and our mentor-mentee relationship does not end here.  I have asked her what I have done that has helped her and what hasn’t.  This way in the future I will be able to help her in whatever way is best fit.

I know through these next years at CMU Julie and I will continue to have a close relationship, and I know that I will continue to grow and learn from her as I hope she is learning from me as well.

“It made a difference to that one”

This summer I had the privilege of going on an Alternative Summer Break through CMU. Alternative Breaks (AB) work by having students sign up to work for a cause they are passionate about, not knowing where they are going or what they will doing.  12 students go on each break, and they meet weekly to become educated on the issue they are going to be working with.  A couple weeks after signing up, the group figures out what service they will be doing and where they will be going for their week of service.

Ever since I was little I have had this crazy amount of love for animals.  Since coming to college I have also become very passionate about the environment and saving the earth we live on.  So, I signed up for the break that deals with the issue of Animal Endangerment.  We found out that we were going to be traveling to Palm Beach, FL to help baby sea turtles find their way to the ocean, and yes, it is as perfect as it sounds.

So, me and twelve girls packed into two mini vans and drove to Palm Beach.  The first day there we spent time getting to know the area and visiting the GORGEOUS beach that we were going to be doing some of our service on.  We make our own meals throughout our week, so we went grocery shopping and set up at the Faith Lutheran church we were staying at.

Throughout the week we spent long days doing service.  We arrived at the beach at 6 A.M. every morning to work with the  Sea Turtle Conservation League of Singer Island.  We worked with this woman Debbie, who started the Sea Turtle program on Singer Island herself.  Debbie is a woman who, though I only spent a week with her, she has made a huge impact on my life.  Everything Debbie says inspires the people around her to do whatever they are passionate about.  She has had numerous jobs throughout the years and all of them were because she felt a pull to them at that time because it was her passion.  She said “I would get these brainstorms of what I wanted to do, and I had to do it.” She started the Sea Turtle program after already having children and having a career.  She wanted to save the turtles, and so she did just that.  Debbie does all of this program solely based on volunteering.  She and her volunteers, and us for the week we were there, spend 4 hours every morning walking the beach, helping baby sea turtles find their way to the ocean, excavating old sea turtle nests, marking new sea turtle nests, and documenting hatched nests.

After working in the mornings with Debbie, we would head over to the Loggerhead Marine Life Center to volunteer with them.  Loggerhead is a sea turtle rehabilitation center that helps rescue turtles of any age and nurse them back to health, to have them later released back into the ocean.  Loggerhead was the most amazing place I have visited to see animals.  They don’t treat the turtles any different than how a patient at a rehabilitation center that was a human would be treated.  When volunteering with Loggerhead, we did any type of work that they needed help with,  the majority of this being painting the pier they own.  We also helped them with yard work stuff in the front of the building.  Even though we were not directly working with the turtles at this point,  there is still so much reward to be gained from doing indirect service.

Our last service trip stop of the day was to MacArthur State Park.  While working at MacArthur State Park, we helped remove invasive species, trim trails, and clean up trash from trails.  This service was probably the service that was the most difficult for my group simply because we were usually doing service here at the peak heat of the day in long pants and shirt in the middle of August.  However, this work was work that really helped fire up my love for the environment.  Seeing all of the trash that is left around is heartbreaking, and so being able to help contribute to making the world a cleaner place was the ultimate win.

This trip taught me more than I could ever imagine.  Sea Turtles are endangered and only 1 in 10,000 sea turtles make it to adulthood.  Most nests have around 100 turtle hatchlings in them.  This means that a lot of nests are overall unsuccessful.  I saw a lot of nests that not a lot of the sea turtles made it to the surface of the sand alive because they get fried in the sand as a result of rising temperatures.   When sea turtles do make it out the sand, many do not make it to the water because of the amount of light that is on from buildings, hotels, and condos that lead them in the wrong direction. A lot of sea turtles are harmed once they get in the ocean because of the amount of trash that is left in the ocean. Overall, I just learned how much of an impact our everyday actions can impact the animals around us.  Even though so many sea turtles don’t make it to adulthood, and we can only help so many in a week, it is important to remember that we may not have saved all the turtles, but we were able to help some. Any is better than none.

A few things that I have started changing about my everyday life to lessen my carbon footprint and help support the environment:

• I was already a vegetarian before this trip, but this AB has reiterated my reasons for doing so
• I no longer use plastic grocery bags
• I limit my use of plastic straws
• I do not drink out of plastic water bottles

My AB was one of the best weeks of my life because of the work I got to do, and the people I got to connect with.  You can bet I will go on another Alternative Break this winter.

 

 

Learning to Lead

As an LAS cohort (plus one leader who is not a part of LAS) we take a class together called LDR 200L.  This class is a leadership class where we learn important skills needed to improve our leadership abilities. Throughout the class we had to facilitate different activities and learn about the different leadership theories.  Though there were multiple leadership theories that were applicable to my life, the one I found the most applicable was the Behavioral Approach to leadership.

A lot of time in leadership people focus a lot on the relationship between the leader and the followers.  Don’t be me wrong this is an EXTREMELY vital part of leadership, however I like how this theory focus a lot on how leaders can be a mixture of being very task-oriented and relationship oriented.  I consider myself to be a very personable person, however, when things are not getting finished or are left until the last minute I get pretty anxious, which will affect the people around me to become anxious as well.  I think knowing how to balance task and relationships is one of the most important parts of being a great leader.

I am going to be a guide for Leadership Safari this fall, so when I was learning the theories in LDR I would try to put them into context of how I can use my knowledge while leading a small group.  Behavioral approach was one of the most easily applicable in this scenario too because of the amount of activities that are fit in to such a short amount of time during Leadership Safari.  However, in order to make Leadership Safari an amazing experience for the participants, I will need to form fun and trusting relationships with them.  LDR 200 has made me feel much more comfortable with my leading abilities, and it also taught me that I have A LOT more room for growth; that’s a good thing!

I also learned a lot about how to debrief.  Going through LDR has taught me that debriefing is the most important part of leading an activity.  It is the part that connects all the dots and allows participants to see the bigger picture of what they are doing.  Debriefing allows the leader of the activity to learn as well and see a new a view point on things that could have not seen before.

A lot of people didn’t like going to LDR because it was three hour long evening class, but I can honestly say that I always looked forward to it because learning about things that were so applicable to our lives was SO FUN!

My Mentor kicks Buck(holz)

My LAS mentor is Stephanie (Her last name is Buckholz if you didn’t understand the pun).  But not only is she my mentor, she is one of my best friends.

Coming into college I was extremely intimidated by LAS.  I wasn’t really sure what it was, or what being a part of it entailed.  Steph helped smooth everything out, and helped me realize how to get all my crap together in the midst of coming to college.  I feel like this is something most mentees can say about their mentor, but not many can say that they feel like their mentor is their other half.  Steph literally always knows how to make me smile or laugh with one look.  We truly understand each other so well, and we are so able to be open with each other.  The two of us share a lot of passions, such as the environment, women’s rights, and more, so we never are in a lack of intellectual conversation.  We both are completely fascinated by science, and have had countless conversations about how in awe we are of the way the human body works.  She is someone who I connect with so well on these deeper levels, but I cannot overlook how much our quirky goofy personalities go together.

I learned a lot about what type of mentor I want to be through my relationship with Steph.  Steph and I got to be so close because we would make plans to have mentor/mentee dates to get dinner around once a week.  These dinner plans quickly turned into something I looked forward to, and they are always the bright light of my week.  By always having the plans to see each other, it became so much easier for us to connect and get comfortable with each other.  Next year, when I am a mentor I plan on doing the same sort of thing with my mentee.  I want to be friends with my mentee, not just be their mentor.

Having such a close relationship with Stephanie has made having her as a Mentor so much easier.  I am eternally grateful for her love and friendship, and I cannot wait to get closer over the years.

 

Walking for a Cure

A part of our LAS protocol is participating in a LEAD team.  There are multiple LEAD teams such as Special Olympics, Competition Day, LAS in the D, and more.  My LEAD team that I was placed on was Relay for Life.  I was super excited when I found out this was my LEAD team because it was one of my top choices.  However, as Relay was growing closer we hadn’t has many meetings, done much fundraising, or decided on what we were doing with our table at the actual event.  Long story short, the LEAD team was struggling and there was an opportunity for me to become the new LEAD team co-chair.  I took this opportunity, and at first I was pretty nervous because I already have a busy schedule.  However, this gave me the opportunity to really dive in and enjoy Relay for Life in a way that is much different than I had I not been put into this leadership position.

With such a short amount of time the other co-chairs and I really were hoping that members of the LEAD team would do some fundraising on their own.  We began fundraising only three weeks before Relay and because of the commitment of the team members (S/0 Allie Rutman, Kelsey Corr, and Riley McGuire!!!) we ended up being 5th out of 59 teams for fundraising.  In a short three weeks we had raised over 1250 dollars for Relay for Life.  As things started to come together, I got super excited for Relay.

The day of Relay was probably one of my best days I have had at Central.  Relay started at 12pm, and from the very start there were people there ready to walk for a cure.  I had not been to a Relay in a really long time and I had forgotten how much fun it was!   It was even fun when we were sitting at the table selling cookies, selling t-shirts, and getting pied in the face.

The best part of the day was when a janitor working the event came up to us after seeing us do the pie in the face, and offered to add a little bit of flare to that particular fundraiser.  He said that when he was a little kid, he saw someone all dressed up get pied in the face and thought it was hilarious.  He said that it has been a life long dream to have someone pie him in the face while wearing a dress suit because he wanted to make people laugh.  He said he would go buy real pies(we had been using paper plates filled with whip cream) and also donate 20 dollars if we found people to pie him.  We got a survivor to pie him at the end of the night and five others attending Relay also pied him.  At the end of the night after he got pied, he was so happy it brought tears to his eyes.  He said he loved that not only could he live out his dream, he had the opportunity to make people laugh, but also donate to such a great cause.

Relay for Life really causes me to sit back and think about how many people in the world are affected by cancer.  You cannot go anywhere or know anyone without seeing/knowing someone who has had a relative or a friend or even themselves be affected by cancer.  Relay gives us the opportunity to help this cause, but also remember our loved ones.

This whole experience has taught me a lot about leadership.  I took this opportunity because I thought that it would help me a lot, and I didn’t really think much about how it would give me the opportunity to take a larger role in helping the community of people that Relay effects.  During the Luminaria ceremony, I kind of realized that the best part of this experience was being able to see that guy make people happy and see the survivors do the survivor lap.  This kind of opened my eyes that though leadership does help me grow, that is just a secondary benefit.  The best benefit of Leadership is the influence that we have on others and the differences we can make in the world.

Get Connected, FOR FREE

As a part of LAS we got the opportunity to go to the Connections Conference at Great Wolf Lodge in Traverse City, MI.  Though LAS goes to the conference, it is open to anyone on Central’s campus that would like to go.  When we got there the first night, we were introduced to the groups we would be working with over the course of the next two days and then were given free time to go to the waterpark!  The next day, we woke up early and got right to business on learning new information about leadership.  We were allowed to pick four different speakers we wanted to go to throughout Saturday.  I chose “Branching Out: Netflix and No Chill”, “Leadership Through the Eyes of Disney”, “Growing your roots”, and “Friendship in Leadership.”

“Branching Out: Netflix and No Chill” was one of my favorites out of the sessions.  It focused on disconnecting from social media and our technology in order to connect with others.  We ended by doing an activity where we colored leaves based on  how much we time we think we spend doing a certain activity.  There were six different branches and the leaves pertained to whatever theme branch they were on.  The six different branches were physical, spiritual, psychological, emotional, intellectual, and social.  I loved this activity because it help me realize that sometimes I need to focus on my own health both mentally and physically a little more.  This session focused a lot on not only connecting with others but connecting with yourself as well in order to keep yourself healthy.

“Leadership Through the Eyes of Disney” was really fun because I am a big Disney fan.  We first began with naming our five favorite Disney characters and then choosing which one we thought we identified with the most.  I chose Anna from Frozen because she is goofy and has a very optimistic look on the world.  I feel like her personality matches mine pretty well.  After that we picked our top 10 values that were eventually narrowed down to our number 1 value.  Mine was Family because I am extremely close with my family, and I believe that the value of family includes friendship, love, and trust.  After picking our value they had us think of the values of Disney character and see if the Disney character we chose would have the same value.  I was so shocked that I had never made the connection before that the thing me and Anna have most in common would be our most important value.  I liked the session a lot because something I hold very important in my life is my values, so I love whenever I get the opportunity to talk or think about them and what they mean to me.

“Growing your roots” is a session that dealt a lot with what you look for in a mentor, and what you need to be a successful mentor yourself.  I chose this one because I know in a year I will be a mentor to my LAS mentee, and I want to be able to be the best mentor I can be for them!  We spent a lot of time discussing who our role models are. I have a lot of very prevalent mentors in my life, so we discussed why they are our role models and what traits and things they do that help us in order for us to be able to understand what may work when we are mentors to others.

“Friendship in Leadership” was my other favorite out of the sessions.  The session used Harry Potter to help teach us about healthy relationships and leadership.  I love Harry Potter, so I knew I would enjoy this session when I picked it.  We learned what is known as “Comfort in, Dump Out”.  This basically shows us how to deal with tough situations and how they may be affecting us and others around us who are also dealing with the same situation.  The picture below shows how you should deal with the situations.  You should spend time comforting the people who are more inward on the circle, but you should only vent or explain your feelings of being hurt to people who are more outward of you on the circle.  We then did role playing with the Harry Potter characters where we were each assigned a character from the Goblet of Fire and were told to interact with each right after *SPOILER ALERT* Cedric is killed by Lord Voldemort! I was Cho Chang, so I could vent about how upset I was to everyone except for Amos(Cedric’s dad) and Harry.  However, the only two people who could vent to me were Amos and Harry.  This is more difficult in real life because it is harder to identify who is truly closer to a situation.  The “Comfort in, Dump out” ideology is a very useful method with having healthy relationships and learning how to be a source of comfort for others.

I learned a lot about not only how to connect better with my cohort, but also to be able to connect to other organizations on campus.  The things that I learned are things I can use in everyday life, especially the “comfort in, dump out” theory.  I feel as if I am more able to be conscious of others feelings in a situation with that theory in mind.  Overall, the Connections Conference was a blast, and I hope next year I can go back as a facilitator to help others enjoy the experience and learn as much as I did.