Reflection

During this last week at my applied studies site I have mixed emotions. I am saddened that it is ending so soon when I believe I have so much more I can learn. However, I haven't felt this is the place for me long term so my heart may have not been in it for awhile. I learned some valuable office skills such as how to utilize Excel and Outlook. I also learned how much I still need to grow in terms of inter-personal relationships. I did not take full advantage of this opportunity and gain as much as possible from the people I worked with. I think being an online student may have caused me to be much more of an independent worker than this job called for. The atmosphere at my site is very much like a community; even like a family and I felt reserved much of the time. In retrospect if I was able to do things over I would involve myself more because the opportunities were there I just chose not to. On the surface it doesn't seem like it was the most positive experience but I learned important things about myself that I need to work on in order to succeed in this industry. The non-profit world is about relationships and communication and if those are my two weakest areas right now then I have my work cut out for me. On the other hand I had the opportunity to work around dedicated, sincere and pasionate people which gives me something to look forward to when I am ready to enter the non-profit business world.

SWOT Analysis

From what I've seen, my applied study site is very successful. Everyone knows their job responsibilities and more importantly everyone seems passionate about "ending educational inequity" so I don't have much to suggest for improvement. The main thing I would suggest is to take advantage of the close relationship they have with ASU and have as many interns as they can work with them. Everyone works over 60 hours a week and I think if there were interns there to take on some of the load it could help avoid burnout. I am choosing to use SWOT analysis to help develop a plan for this organization.

Strengths: good relationships within organization and community, organized, good communication, very flexibile.

Weaknesses: constantly need money from donors, constantly need to maintain relationships with alum and donors, work too many hours.

Opportunities: Pepsi grant, word-of-mouth, new relationships with universities.

Threats: Economy cutting jobs, similar non-profits taking available grants, employee burnout.

By allowing more interns to work for this organization, employees can focus on more urgent tasks and let the interns take care of the less urgent but still important assignments.

Mentor Interview

For this weeks Blog I interviewed my mentor, Wendy. I followed the list of questions Dr. Hirshorn suggested.

• What types of challenges do you face? mainly work/family balance issues

• How do you deal with deadline stress, difficult people, and internal politics?It's actually a really nice group of people so I don't have to deal with difficult people or many internal politics. In terms of deadline stress, I just do whatever it takes to get things done. Also, I do my best to prioritize so the most important things get done when they need to.

• What do you like or dislike about your position? I love the people I work with. I like knowing just about everything going on in the office. I like serving in a role that supports others in the office both practically and strategically. I like thinking through challenging problems with other people on the team and I like working closely with our executive director and the rest of our staff members. The only thing I dislike is the pace of the work. That is, people work too many hours in my opinion. Most people on the leadership team work 60-80 hours a week and a good week is 50-55. We are doing great work, but I don't like that people feel like they have to work so many hours to do their jobs well.

• What do you feel can be done to make work go smoother? I think we need to do a careful analysis of everything we do and see what we can cut out so we can spend more of our time on the most important things.

• How do you feel about working with others? I enjoy working with others and I especially like working with my co-workers and other like minded people who work towards social justice and equity.

• How do you separate the personal from the professional? I try to get home early to be with my son and then I work a few hours in the evenings and on the weekends when my son naps so I can make the most of my time with my son. It's really challenging to balance a more than full time job and a family. It's hard to feel like I am doing both well but I try.

• What is your ideal work environment? I like having good role models and mentors to learn from. I like being busy and I like working with other hard working and motivated people. I like having a certain amount of freedom with what I do.

• How does your personality help or hinder your communication with others or your conflict resolution approach? I think that I’m kind and open-minded. So, that helps my communication.

• How has your education and experience prepared you for your current job? I've had a number of different jobs. I've taken different things from each that have prepared me. The skills I learned in law school and with preparing cases helped a lot as I learned to juggle a lot of things at once.

• After whom do they model your work behavior? Or who do you most respect? I most respect my law school professor who supervised me in court and a judge I worked for.

• Have you ever reached out to mentors and has the mentorship system worked for you? I've never specifically participated in a program where I was mentored, but some of my supervisors have been very good mentors.

A day in the life...

I chose my mentor, Wendy, to be the subject of this week’s blog because she always seems busy and is kind of a liaison for of the different departments. However, this day seemed pretty calm and simply started with a 9:00 AM CFAT (Cross Functional Affairs Team) meeting. Today the meeting was about AmeriCorps requirements and planning how to update the corps member handbook. The meeting only lasted till 10 AM then Wendy answered emails from 10-11 AM. Everyone is ALWAYS on their email. It is their major source of communication. I had never used Outlook till I started this internship and now I’m pretty much a pro. The next hour Wendy researched and summarized information about some Charter school grant proposals for the Executive Director. From 12- 12:30 she was on-call about their federal funding in case there were any questions and then it was lunch time. Like I said this was a pretty casual day but some weeks people are so busy they are in the office till 8 or 9 o’clock. A lot of the staff work from home because so much time is spent researching. I know most of my time had been researching Charter schools, downloading school calendars, and contacting corps members regarding past TFA corps members that still teach at their schools.