Blog #3 Like a turtle slowly coming out of its shell

This has been perhaps the busiest week for me since I've started my internship. In two weeks, the high school will be holding one of the biggest events of the year. The Hall of Fame Athletics is a yearly event hosted by the athletic department where some of the school's greatest athletes and coaches of all time are recognized and inducted for their outstanding achievements. The awards covers past graduate nominees from the late 1950's to 90's. Throughout this week, my supervisor, her secretary, myself, and other colleagues have been spending a great amount of time and energy getting all the applications together. We had a very challenging task at hand as there were a large pool of applicants nominated for various awards. This required time, teamwork, organization, and most importantly, “no mistakes”, my supervisor would say. Afterward, each particular group of applicants/nominees had a designated colored folder. For example, the paperwork of those nominees who graduated in 1971 would be placed in green folders, while those of the 1985 class would be distributed in blue/purple folders etc. So you could just imagine how much paper work was involved! Phew!

Despite the amount of work that we put into this project, the one thing I must say is that for the very first time I've begun to open up to my coworkers. I am beginning to feel very confident and comfortable with everyone. I am not as shy or nervous like before. I've also noticed that when placed in a team with people who share similar goal(s) as myself, I tend to speak up more and provide more input. For example, the secretary and I were to have our lunch-break at 1pm. However, we were both unsatisfied with the amount of work completed thus far, and so decided that we were going to work overtime. We agreed and shared with each other that at the end of the day, we want to be able to leave the office feeling comfortable about getting everything completed. “I don't know about you,”she smiled, “But it's just that personal feeling of accomplishing something and not leaving it halfway done.” I responded, “I know exactly what you mean. If I go home without finishing up I'd feel kinda guilty deep down inside leaving it until next week.” “Me too! Exactly,” she exclaimed. Overall, this has been an obviously very good week for me. I feel like I've made small steps towards breaking down those barriers that kept me bottled up. Like a turtle, I'm still stuck in my shell and although my head might not be all the way out, it's half way there :)