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Monthly Journal Reflections
Journal #1
I started my practicum experience with New Students and Family Programs (NSFP) at George Mason University in April 2021. I knew from my current professional role and research projects I completed in the M.A. Higher Education and Student Development program that I wanted to continue working in the orientation, transition, and retention field within Student Affairs. This experience will be primarily remote with some in-person elements such as the Boot Camp Training for the Student Counselors and being point of contact for check-in for the Quill Camps.
During this first month I was still in the busy period for my professional role and so spent most of the time building relationships and learning about the New Student Programs side of NSFP. While this practicum will focus solely on the Quill Camps, I was able to learn about the other New Student programs such as Mason Reads, Preamble, Welcome2Mason, and a few of their future initiatives. I have meetings scheduled with Family Programs and Orientation later in June and July. Additionally, I learned about their organizational structure and how their department is organized internally as well as externally in the larger University Life unit at Mason. Finally, my practicum supervisor gave me access to their Microsoft Teams and so I am able to see how they organize their channels, how they communicate through those channels, and how they organize their Files. I was able to take some elements and apply this piece directly into my current professional role.
As for myself, the main thing I am learning right now is how to let go of control and how to be a better supervisor to my student staff. I have a tendency to take over certain projects and handle them myself since I have a particular vision of how I would prefer them to be completed. While I knew this all along, this experience has shown me first-hand the benefits of distributing more tasks to student staff in order to give them more relevant experience and free up your time for other more demanding projects.
Concerning office culture and politics, this practicum has made me realize that office politics plays a role everywhere. Since I am new to this department and am only working with them temporarily, I will only experience a surface level of their culture and politics.
What has surprised me most about this experience is I thought I would learn from and get the most benefit from completing the projects assigned to me. However, when I look back on my notes, the topics that I write the most on are about leadership and supervisory styles. I realize now, that this area will be what I take with me into my current professional role and any other positions I have in the future. I believe this topic is ringing the most salient for me right now because I have worked in my current organization for six years and am almost numb to how the organization runs and how the leadership team leads. This practicum is a breath of fresh air for me as I get the opportunity to see how other departments lead their team.
The main challenge I have faced so far is time management and juggling between my professional role, the practicum, my classes, and my personal responsibilities. I planned this practicum ahead of time, knowing between April and July my main responsibilities are orientation planning. Having now planned over 10 orientations, this process has become seamless for me. Obviously, the pandemic has added its own challenges to how I traditionally plan orientation, but what has proven to be the most challenging and what I did not foresee was my supervisor (Director, Student Experience) making an international move. This resulted in my transition to Interim Assistant Director, Student Experience, and additional responsibilities. I feel I am not able to give my all to either role and am just doing the bare minimum to get by. This does not sit well with me as I am someone who sets high expectations for herself.
Journal #2
When I started the M.A. Higher Education and Student Development program at George Mason University in the fall 2019 semester, I was both dreading and excited about the opportunity to do a practicum. I knew instantly I wanted to complete my practicum at New Students and Family Programs. I set up an informational interview with the Executive Director at the end of 2019 to learn about his professional experiences and it ended with an offer to contact him once I was ready to start my practicum. A year later, I emailed him to see if the offer was still on the table and here we are, in the middle of my practicum with New Students and Family Programs.
I have spent ten years of my life (not consecutively) at Mason. Six of those years as a professional staff member and four years as an undergraduate student. My experiences as a student has allowed me to witness all the changes, improvements, and initiatives Mason is constantly implementing. Focusing specifically on my first year experience all those years ago, I can see how Mason has provided not only more support services but tailored and focused support services for specific student needs. This has helped me to provide context and background when I do my work at my practicum.
My professional experience at Mason strongly prepared me for work at my practicum site. In my current professional role, I gained experience with student leadership development and program management. However, this practicum has forced me to look at the training materials I created for our INTO Mason Orientation Leader training program and make improvements to fit a different audience within New Students and Family Programs. This caused me to look more closely at my current training program and see what elements I was missing and what elements I needed to elaborate more on. Since the Quill Camp programs are relatively new, I was able to take the skills I learned from managing and facilitating Orientation and apply them to create new logistical processes and procedures for the Quill Camp programs to use in future iterations.
I am extremely lucky to have a practicum supervisor who acknowledges and understands that I have a full-time position that has mandatory meetings I am required to go to and lead. She has been very flexible in working with some of my time constraints to make sure I am able to attend every meeting necessary so I can feel like a member of the Quill Camp team. We also meet one-on-one every week where we discuss not only my practicum projects, but my career goals and professional development. For example, she encouraged me to attend the President Town Hall with University Life, the University Life Student Success Symposium, and the University Life Summer All Staff Meeting. After attending these events, we would meet and she would encourage me to share my thoughts and insights on what I experienced. Additionally, she set up a meeting so I could meet and learn more about the Family Programs team since this is an area in the Orientation field I am not too familiar with. Overall, she has been supportive and flexible when it comes to making sure I am able to get the most out of my practicum experience as possible.
Journal #3
Reflecting on my practicum experience and looking through the ACPA and NASPA competencies again, the Advising and Supporting section has been what influenced me in my work the most. One of my tasks was to develop the agenda and the content for the Student Counselor’s Bootcamp Training that takes place two days prior to the start of Quill Camp. I decided to introduce cultural concepts such as high and low context cultures and multicultural communication strategies to the training (interpersonal skills). Additionally, I added reflection time and questions to various sessions in the training such as after a communication activity, a True Colors Assessment, and after a SMART goals session (group dynamics). This was influenced by both the ACPA and NASPA competencies and on feedback from my practicum supervisor when she was reviewing the training content I had created. This was an aspect I was missing in the current student orientation leader training I organize as part of my professional role. This experience showed me the value of self-reflection for student leaders and I have recently added it as a component of our student orientation leader training. Finally, towards the end of my practicum, there was conflict amongst the Quill Camp team which led to one of the Graduate Assistants resigning from their position. During this time, I acted as a mediator to provide an unbiased point of view and to help ensure what was being communicated was both respectful and constructive (conflict and crisis situations).
Another section of the ACPA and NASPA competencies that influenced my work was Law, Policy, and Governance. Since the Bootcamp Training and the Quill Camp would be in-person events, we had to make sure we were abiding by the federal, state, and university Covid-19 guidelines as far as mask requirements, social distancing, and surveillance testing. In addition to Covid-19 guidelines, we also had to abide by the executive order issued by Governor Northam requiring state agencies to stop buying, selling, and distributing single use plastic items. This directly affected our ability to purchase plastic water bottles, plastic cups, and plastic utensils. We transitioned to paper products and used canned water instead.
There are a number of skills I have been able to strengthen because of this practicum experience, one of those being organization and multi-tasking. This semester forced me to reevaluate how I organize tasks and priorities since I had to juggle responsibilities both in my professional role and my practicum role. Due to having twice as many meetings and less time in the traditional 8-hour work time to complete tasks, I learned how to manage my time effectively and more importantly learned what my limits were and how to delegate to others. I have always had a problem saying no when someone asked something of me and was never fully aware when I was over exerting myself. About halfway through my practicum, I reached a point where I was overly stressed and anxious and I had to take a step back from both and figure out a new routine. This is an area I still need to work on, but I can now recognize when I am doing too much for my well-being and can voice that to others.
Another skill I was able to strengthen is working with diverse populations of students. I work predominantly with international students in my professional role, but this practicum provided me with the opportunity to work with students of varying cultural backgrounds, gender identities, sexual orientations, and more. This experience forced me to be more cognizant of how I was identifying students, to be more aware of gender neutral restrooms on campus, and how to create a welcoming and open space for all.
I truly enjoyed my practicum experience with New Student and Family Programs at George Mason University and hope to attain a position within the Orientation, Transition, and Retention field at another higher education institution. In order to achieve this, I would need to effectively communicate my practicum experience in job interviews highlighting skills and competencies that are unique to this experience such as familiarity with state and university policies, working with diverse student populations, and managing conflict within a team. I would need to network and utilize the connections the New Student and Family Programs staff have to my advantage. I will need to step out of my comfort zone and ask them for help in connecting me with professionals they know in the field.