Today, we were scheduled to begin training our student leaders. Yes, spring training, although we do not get to join the Red Sox in sunny Ft. Myers. Our focus for this weekend of training is team building, professionalism and campus resources. Ironically, upon arrival today, we as professionals experienced a slight bump in the road.
Our network was down. A phone message let us know that it might be early afternoon when we could access our email, shared drives, printers and faxes. Needless to say, this challenged us. All of our presentations and schedules live on our common/shared drives, which we could not access. All of the work that we had done to prepare for our three day training, including an overnight retreat, was inaccessible. No power points, no hand outs, no lists.
My colleagues amazed me. This is how I know how versatile student affairs professionals can be. We did presentations from memory. We incorporated the network outage into lessons about professionalism. We talked about how when you take responsibility for doing something, you do it to the best of your ability. We discussed that it was unacceptable for us to throw up our hands and say, “oh well, no training for you.” We talked about how life will unexpectedly toss you curveball and the mark of a true student leader is how you respond. Are you an amateur who just gives up or a professional that makes things happen? We got down into the nitty-gritty with our students and turned it into a teachable moment. We hand wrote a check-in sheet so we can make sure that everyone gets on the bus this afternoon. We laughed publically and made jokes. We made sure we didn’t convey stress. It turned out to be a good training morning.
I wonder how much more effective this training on professionalism will be compared the past trainings where we stood in front of the class, prepared with our Power Points and handouts. How often do we get to role model working through a challenging situation? We work with students as they grapple with these types of situations, but how often do they get to see a team of SA professional join together to overcome a bump in the road? What intangible things did our students learn from us today about what true value of professionalism is?
