Week 3: Theories in Action/Personal Contributions

This past week was broken down into two different sections. The first I had the opportunity to participate in PUPP’s annual retreat to the Princeton Blairstown Center. This is a time for the summer faculty and scholars to recreated and rekindle connections. Additionally, this retreat marks the start of the summer for many of our scholars and gets them in the right mind to start the institute. During this time, I was able to perform many tasks that enabled me to look at the roles of the leader follower relationships in my program. For this retreat I was given different tasks that were mainly focused on group organizing and any other logistics that needed to be done by the start of our program (6/25), but each task that I completed was not finished until I ran it by my supervisors. We would sit down with our team which included my supervisor, the program coordinate, and the director of the program. We would discuss what went well, areas of improvement, and any contributions I could make. At this time, I began to see how I was able to use some of the knowledge taught in Jepson could be applied in the meetings I was a part of. Due to my past with the program I have been able to gain trust in the staff which and at this point I was able to take a more leadership role. It amazes me how much one can gain idiosyncrasy credit through just a few small tasks. I personally have gained so much more confidence in my role in the program even in the midst of the confusion of these past two weeks. With this confidence the second half of the week was filled with different moments of self-reflection. We had different guest speakers that came in and helped us as a TA’s to understand how our personalities would matter when we begin working with the scholars on a day-to-day schedule. One speaker proctored and discussed the Meyers-Briggs assessment. Through this each TA team was able to understand how they could find an even balance within their groups when working with the scholars. As the liaison of the TA team I was able to add my input as to how one needs to be mindful of their strengths and areas of improvements in their groups in order to reach their end goals. I gave examples how individuals with high emotional-intelligences may be favored by the scholars, but they may not bring order to the scholar’s daily activities. I mentioned that if another TA had a more task-oriented mind then they could balance each other by finding ways to plan activities with the teachers that they would be working with in order to support their strengths while improving the areas that may not be as strong. Adding my input into some of these sessions felt good and I look forward to assisting over the next few weeks.