Is it that time again?

I love the week right before school begins to get into full swing. There are so many new faces around the hallways and suddenly the institution isn’t silent and has that dull roar of voices in every hallway.

I’m excited about a few things. First of all, last week the Dean of the School of Trades, took me to visit the Rig Tech students where they were doing their fall-safety portion of their course on a practice mini-rig which was kind of rad.

Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to actually chat with any of the students one on one since they were technically in class and busy giving their instructor a hard time (jokingly of course) for forgetting to put on his gloves. This was funny, because earlier he was telling all of the students to ensure they had full personal protective equipment on.

Next, I got a tour of their classroom where they get to simulate what it is like working on a real rig. Don’t even ask me to explain how or what it entails… but I took some cool pictures!

Other than the above, I’ve been busy with orientations, which has been really cool. I love speaking at orientations and I love it when I get a student stopping in the office saying “I heard you speak at my orientation, and I want to get involved…” It’s really neat to see new students so interested in what’s going on at NAITSA.

And of course, like all of you, I too have to get back into the groove of school as I pick up my textbooks and course-packs for semester. I’m taking what I think will be some very interesting classes. My classes this semester are: Quality Management, Immunology, Urinalysis, and Physiology. It should be a busy and fun semester. If you’re in any of those classes this semester, you should definitely send me an email or drop by the office. I’d love to find a few study-buddies (as lame as that may sound).

Last but not least, I’m also looking forward to NAITSA’s Pirate Party. Last year it was a blast and this year I can’t wait to grab a Value Village pirate outfit and have a few cold ones while going up and down the North Saskatchewan River listening to some wicked live music. Go buy tickets! They’re bound to sell out pretty quickly!

If you see me in the halls say hi, and don’t forget that my door is always open.

Cheers!

~Tess

I finally blog again.

The last month has been hectic to say the least. I’ve been busy with a couple of student issues left over from last year, working hard on getting ahead on my SMART Goals, developing some internal organization policies, taking part in the interviews and selection of a new Provost and Vice President Academic for NAIT, starting the beginning steps of planning a conference that NAITSA and SA MacEwan are hosting together, preparing for a new Senate, and a few other things on top of all of that.

One of the more fun things I’ve been working on as of late is learning my way around taking and editing video footage. This is something that I’m very excited to be bringing to the students this year on the NAITSA website. You can expect, in the upcoming months, to see video blogs by the executives, videos of our events, “How To” videos, and so much more.

I’ll leave you with one last tidbit, and that’s to encourage you to get as involved as possible this year. There are so many ways to make your time here so much more valuable than just receiving a piece of paper. Drop by our offices to find out what opportunities there are!

Enjoy the last few weeks before classes start. Cheers!

~Tess

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

Summer is often interesting around NAITSA. It’s also a bit odd. I’ve had a few students visit me, but the institution is usually very quiet. We don’t have any big summer events, our restaurant and bar, The Nest, is closed until late August, and there are generally less staff in the office on a regular day as people take their much needed vacations scattered throughout the summer. Don’t be fooled though… just because we seem to be quite quiet around here – we’re still working hard. The past little while I’ve been doing some work with the Faculty Development and Performance Evaluation task force and getting some major headway with this group of amazing and inspiring intellectuals. I’ve also been working on developing my SMART goals for the year ahead (I’ve got some pretty cool stuff on the go) as well as working with the Registrar and some others to get co-curricular transcripts implemented.

One of the most exciting things coming up for the four executives is the upcoming Leader’s Hall conference, a conference dedicated to the professional and personal development in student leaders across Canada. I’m mostly excited for this because I’ve never been to a national conference, so the networking opportunities are incredible. The other neat thing about this conference is that this is Leader’s Hall’s first conference. I have high hopes for the conference, especially with Gallivan (NAITSA’s Health and Dental provider) is sponsoring it.

Other than that, not much else is happening until mid July, when we head out to Red Deer for the ASEC Goal Setting Conference. I’ll post about that one closer to the date.

In the meantime, other than work, I’ve been enjoying both the rain and the heat that we’ve had for the past few weeks here in Edmonton, and I’ve been watching the World Cup like crazy. I’m one of those insane people who actually wakes up early to watch the games at 5:30 and 8:00 in the morning. I’m also insane in that I cheer for three different teams. I cheer for Italy because I’m Italian, and you can’t not cheer for your country of heritage. I also cheer for England because I’m also English, and again, I can’t not cheer for my other country of heritage. And finally, I cheer for Brazil for no real reason except that they’re an awesome team.

I know there’s one team that I’m NOT cheering for, and that’s Germany. The only reason I’m purposely not cheering for them: to annoy Tim, because he seems to think they’ll win the cup. I like to cheer against him, and it’s pretty fun.

Finally, something you should definitely check out if you’re interested in writing, is Writing Excuses, a podcast by Brandon Sanderson, Howard Tayler, and Dan Wells that lays out their tricks, tips, and pitfalls of writing for aspiring authors. Each podcast is only fifteen minutes long because, as they say “You’re in a hurry, and we’re not that smart”. It’s definitely worth listening to if you’re into writing.

Otherwise, have a wonderful week and hopefully I’ll be posting again in another week. Cheers!

-Tess

May is a time of change here at NAITSA. This is the time that your student leadership changes over and the people you elected back in February actually “take office”. For all executives, May is a month of training, team-building, and generally learning our jobs and what it is we need to do to succeed and represent the students the best. It’s an interesting change in the office, that’s for sure.

We’ve got a solid Executive Council this year and you should be excited! Returning from last year with me is Timothy Jobs (President) and adding to our team, brand new this year, are Govind Pillai (VP External) and Tyler Bernard (VP Campus Life). We’re all pretty open people who you should get to know! Our doors are always open!

Like I said above, May is a time of change here at NAITSA. We’ve got the end of the fiscal year coming up, the Campus Culture team is hard at work planning the next year’s worth of events, all of the Executives are learning our jobs and doing multiple other things at the same time, and it’s the end of the academic year. One thing you might want to note is that if you feel like you have been inaccurately assessed for your grades on an assignment, project, exam, or entire course from this past semester and you want to appeal it, you can! Please email me (tessac@nait.ca) if you do, because the sooner the better!

So keep a watch on NAITSA’s blogs, forum, and newsletters for information on events, student governance, clubs, and tons of other stuff!

Enjoy this beautiful weather that we’re having! Cheers!

~Tessa