Friday, October 31, 2008

Shadow

On Thursday I shadowed my mentor Lasana Hotep from 11:30am until 9:00pm. Yesterday was a long day for him since one of the key MSS organizations was having a speaker come to give a presentation on Manhood and Masculinity. The speakers name is Amon Rashidi. Lasana let me come in at 11:30 because the work that he does at the start of the day, is not very glamorous or anything like that. Also, some is supposed to be in confidence because his job position of Student Success Coordinator also has like a mentoring aspect related to basically any problem that a student has. His first line of work in the day is to check his phone and email and prioritize what messages he received are important, he said that he has around 1800 emails in his inbox. Next he checks and sees what all the upcoming programs are that are being hosted that week by the cornerstone organizations in MSS. Then he has a Student Success Coordinator Check list with other responsibilities that he has also. The list looks like this:

FACILITATE- Sankofa, MSS Internship, Canon Leadership, Vision for Black Men, BAC Convocation

ADVISING- BAC, Stars

COMMITTEES- North Neighborhood (residence halls), Advantage Success Program

MENTORING- NAAP Scholars, HMDP, ACSF

(For info on any of these programs you can check the MSS WEBSITE)

His current projects as of yesterday, besides hosting the speaker that arrived that day, are Black History Month and he is trying to make a Hip Hop Chess Federation.

What I learned from just by looking at what all he is in charge of is that first, it takes an in depth planner to be in a position like that. He has so many different programs that he is in charge of that, getting behind would make it physically impossible to be successful. What happened after I was in his office for a few minutes we talked for a few minutes and he asked about some of my situations that I have been going through and what the results were. I am sure that it was an interesting story to hear because it has been a crazy journey to end up being here this November, compared to where I was last November. This was not only personal, but it would also help him in the future if he had another student go through anything similar to what I have been through, he will be able to assist that person, just by listening to what my story was. Other students came into the office while he was still telling me what all he does on a normal day. Some students came in to report about the meeting regarding the BAC Float in homecoming and he told them to find out the details with the vehicle that they are going to get, the insurance, if they are getting candy it has to be approved, and to rent a vehicle they will have to make the company they are renting from become an approved vendor for ASU. He also took the opportunity to give us some advice as members of Greek organizations because everyone in the room was in a Historically Black Greek Letter Organization. Then he planned a follow up meeting for next week. Around noon, we went to pick up the speaker for an event being hosted by African American Men of ASU (AAMASU), which is one of the core organizations of the MSS. After picking him up we went to lunch. At lunch it was Lasana, Nick, the AAMASU coordinator, Amon, the Speaker and AJ, the director of MSS. The discussion at the table was interesting and ranged from politics, to making black institutions for youth, youth intervention programs and the problems and the results and progress made by the programs. Before we were done AJ, the director of MSS, had to leave a little early to meet with the Dean of Students. After eating lunch, we went to the speaker’s hotel and checked him in; Nick gave him the schedule for the event and some other literature for him to keep about the AAMASU organization. Later he took time to go home and get ready and I went my separate way until the event, he brought the speaker in the room 30 minutes early and the event started promptly at 7pm.

What I learned from shadowing Lasana is that I have a lot of work to be able to handle the level of responsibility that he handles. He is responsible for so many different organizations at the same time. To go more in depth, he is the teaches the internship class on Wednesdays as well as advise us on our projects and programs. He facilitated the meeting for Visions of Black Men on Monday, two hours from 6pm to 8pm. He is on top of the BAC float and events. He always has time to talk to me or find a way to help me out when I have a situation, and that’s just me. There are plenty of other students as well that seek his advice and assistance, all while he is still responsible for the 1800 emails and Student Success Coordinator Checklist. The way that he is responsible for so much is similar to the military, because I will continue to be responsible for more than more. First we are in charge of a platoon, then a company, battalion and some variations in between. Then, similarly I will be working to accomplish the mission that my commander gives to me, helping and assisting my soldiers with anything that may be hindering them from being able to do or focus on our mission. Being in charge of that much at first sight seems like it would be overwhelming especially keeping in mind that other things come up that you are still responsible for concurrently with your spelled out duties. Also, taking care of the presenter is similar to what we will have to do when a commanding officer or other VIP will come from another unit to visit for a ceremony or whatever the occasion may be. When Lasana picked up Amon, there was no question about, where we were going to eat, and also we did not go to McDonald’s. He also did a lot of mentoring and advising work with students yesterday, those are things that I will have to do for my soldier’s when they start messing up and I will have to help them with projects that they are working on or help them figure out how to fix their life so that they can work better for me. His skills at relationship building assist a great deal with being able to do the mentoring and advising honestly and effectively, without becoming the “A**hole”, so that is definitely a skill set that I observed yesterday that I will try to improve myself.

Sample Work Resume/Cover Letter

click here to see my resume/cover letter

Thinking about my Future

My future is fairly set in stone already barring some disaster. I am already committed to being an officer in the U.S. Army; my commitment is for 6 years. So, working with Student Affairs is fairly out of the question. I do believe that I would pursue if right now I was in a situation where, I did not have employment already lined up for myself after graduation. Working with MSS is not really directly related to being in the army on the surface level, but being interdisciplinary in nature, it is all related, using the same leadership techniques to accomplish different goals in different situations. First, the military is part of the reason why student affairs was created at universities. This became because the military began to use the GI Bill as a recruiting tool to get civilians to join the army. Obviously this was during war time, but after the war was over and troops came home, they began to change the dynamics of colleges and universities. College became less of an exclusive institution and now people of any race, class and gender could attend college with the GI Bill, so the classrooms became much more diverse immediately and unexpectedly. Also, to add to that, the war veterans came to college not only as different classes of citizens, but with issues related to have experienced war. Student Affairs departments were created to address the issues that were born out of the GI Bill and the Higher Education Act, that made college more accessible to citizens that have not had the resources to attend colleges. I learned about this the first day of our classroom development, Student Affairs was created to assist with issues that arose out of having military students and students that needed financial assistance to get into college.
Another part of our professional development was an in depth teaching about how to successfully run an organization, and some of the common mistakes that most programs commit. I was previously the President of my chapter of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc. and many of the lessons we learned I wish I had known previously. Also, many of the teachings were things that I had already learned in Army ROTC, but I always thought of them as, how the army works, not even thinking about transitioning some of it to other organizations. We learned goal setting, fund raising, distribution of literature, recruitment, resource management, time management, energy, having monthly, weekly and daily goals, and how to address members that fail to carry their load. Some of the things that I will be sure to take with me was goal setting, it is more important that I thought. If you set a goal for everything that you do, you will be more successful. If you say you want ten members, then at your recruitment events, you should also have a goal there to reach MORE than ten people, so that after attrition, you will still have ten. Then you have to plan, how are you going to get all those people to your recruitment event, which is more effective than just saying, we want ten people, hope we are going to get it somehow. Goal setting in the military is no different, but knowing how to set goals correctly from day one will be an advantage to have.
In the classroom, we also learned about various leadership styles. Outside of the classroom topics that we have discussed there is much application with actually assisting in running and evaluating programs that the MSS and its member organizations host, which are many in number. I am working with three programs right now, the biggest is being a part of the planning for ASU’s Martin Luther King Jr. rally next semester. The experience with running these organizations is a great insight to problems and situations to expect when working with a large group of peers. It is also great preparation for anything that is based on management, which is what being an Army officer is about. It would be too simple to say what I am doing is unrelated, but taking an analytical look at what I am doing right now, it is the same thing that I will be doing as an army officer, minus the weapons. Making this experience relevant to what I will face in the military is what will make the internship count. Trying to only do what they ask without looking deeper, will not benefit my career.

Theories Used in the MSS Office

One major theory that is used in Student Affairs is Critical Theory. My internship site, Multicultural Student Services (MSS) is part of the student affairs department. Critical theory provides an analytical and ethical foundation needed to uncover the structure of underlying social practices and to reveal the possible distortion of social life in society. The goal of critical theory is to bring about change and achieve equality for an oppressed group of people. Those same factors and goals are the basis for why Student Affairs has was created at most universities and colleges, to increase and facilitate diversity in higher education.

Uncertainty reduction theory is also used a lot in the MSS because most of the work is socially based. Uncertainty reduction theory explores how interpersonal uncertainty affects the communication between those two people. So when you first meet a stranger, you will have very little conversation and as you find similarities with that person, the communication will increase. It also says that with a high level of uncertainty there is a low amount of intimacy, as the level of uncertainty decreases, the level of intimacy increases.

Race is a theory that is used a lot in the MSS because in general it is related to culture. Race is a man made construct that is used to categories differences in humanity. Race is defined by skin tone, presence/absence of body hair, width of the nose, thickness/thinness of lips and coarseness of hair. Although the categories are firmly defined, very few people meet all the standards to fit into one race because of intermingling and the fact that race is not biologically defined. So if the majority of your features appear to be negroe features, you are classified accordingly and subject to the social implications and presumptions that other members of the race are exposed to.

Finally we have the contingency theory. It says that leaders and leadership styles are only effective in certain situations. It says that there is no one right leadership style, it is dependent upon the situation present. For example we would readily agree that a dictatorship style of leader is negative, but one of the advantages to it is that it is fast, decisive and absolute. So in a situation where there is no time to educate others on a situation and getting everyone’s input, it would be more effective to make the decision and meet the important deadline, or whatever the situation may have been.