It’s been a while since I’ve blogged so here I go.
Leader’s Hall
Things that were great about it: Excellent networking opportunities, great hotel and conference venue, beautiful campus, and a few good sessions. Of the good sessions, there was Drew Dudley, a former executive and Shinerama coordinator from out east. I found him to be an entertaining, engaging, and interesting speaker with lots of good stories and life advice, but there wasn’t a whole lot of professional development out of it. He was a good choice for the first speaker of the conference though, as he was relatively inspirational for new executives. I suppose maybe because I’ve already got a year behind me I didn’t find his session as helpful as maybe a first year executive might. The next useful speaker was Jeff Rybak (on the last day). He gave some insight to CFS and talked about how to work with your administration, and gave some good advice on who to speak to on campus when you’re looking for info. Unfortunately, his advice comes from a University, which didn’t help me out a whole lot. The last part of the conference that I felt was good was the Round-Table discussion on the last day, where it was an open and honest conversation about the quality of the conference and what can be done better in future years. I felt that it was incredibly productive and that future conferences will be able to build off of our feedback.
Things that weren’t so great about it: One of the speakers was Steve Pilote, who talked about a lot of different things, in particular personality types. He broke it up into four different types. I was definitely a three way tie between Ponderer, Elaborator, and Harmonizer, with Commander pretty close behind. Frankly, I did not find that session particularly helpful. I think the reason all of us are in the leadership positions that we are in is because we are a healthy mix of all of these personality types – not just one. I hate these personality labels. I am not a harmonizer. I am not an elaborator. I am not a ponderer. I am not a commander. I am Tessa. I have my own strengths and weaknesses that may or may not align with some of those labels. But I refuse to label myself or anyone else as one of those. Just my two cents on that session.
Overall, what I got out of Leader’s Hall was mostly the networking opportunities. Never having been to a national student conference before, it was fascinating meeting other student executives from around the country and hearing what we have in common and what differs between the issues we deal with and how our institutions and students’ associations actually run. The idea-sharing with the other executives was also really valuable.
One thing I must mention is that I am very jealous of the University of Calgary because of the following:
I wish we had a classroom like that at NAIT. Virtual Reality Research Laboratory sound AWESOME!
Moving on…
NAIT is replacing all of the windows in the NAITSA offices. Unfortunately, this means that we have been displaced from our regular working space. It’s frustrating to say the least, especially with only having access to my email through my phone. This makes my job a bit more difficult than usual since I am connected through wireless rather than hardwire. Working off of a Mac means I have no access to the VPN network – which means no email to my computer unless I’m hardwired. I’m being patient though, and doing my best. My office is actually just about finished, only it reeks like fresh commercial paint and the fumes are likely to make me pass-out if I were to work in there for more than an hour. So for now, I sit in our front lobby with my laptop on my lap doing what work I can.
So what have I been doing during all of this construction? Working on SMART goals have been a big thing. I’m working on policies, which is a goal I’ve carried forward from last year. I’ve been reading a lot of them and writing a lot of them and bothering my co-workers for feedback on a lot of them. I won’t be the only person sick of policies by the end of the year. I’m also working on drafting updates to some of our bylaws that are in dire need of it so that when Senate is elected in September we can get right to work. I’ve got lots of other stuff on the go as well, but I won’t go into it now.
Next Week and Later
Next week, all of the Executives will be at the Alberta Students’ Executive Council Goal-Setting Conference being held in Red Deer. The week after I will be back in my office (that hopefully won’t be filled with paint fumes) and will be spending that week catching up on work I missed and continue making progress on the many projects I have on the go.
And that’s the update. Cheers!
-Tessa