Final Reflection

It’s crazy how the senior project flew by. It was intimidating before I started, because I knew the Development Department is responsible for graduation and all the connections with alumni, which means I have to reach out to strangers who only share the same high school background with me. On top of that, I hate making phone calls, especially to people I don’t know. Therefore, after making the decision to work in the Development Department, I’ve been anxious about what I would do. Would I make a thousand phone calls everyday? Would I have to call strangers only to be hung up on? All the uncertainty taunts me until the first day of my senior project. 

I remember vividly what we did the first day. Making phone calls, having meetings, meeting new people…all of the above didn’t happen. Instead, we counted plates. I have this video of the three of us, Wes, Carly and me, sitting on the carpet and counting plates, completely confused with why we are doing this. What Carly said later really summed up the thoughts we all had: “I think this is not what I signed up for.” Indeed, as counting plates doesn’t seem even a little bit relevant to making arrangements of reunion.

After a few days of similar work my mom called me, asking how my senior project went. I told her it felt like we’re interns doing errands nobody else wanted to do. She laughed and told me, that’s exactly what we’re supposed to do. It’s unlikely that the “company” would hand you an important task on the first day, if I saw the Department as a company. I thought to myself that my mom’s right, Proctor wouldn’t let me call up the alums because who knows if I would mess it up? It would not be good if the alums think Proctor now can’t even teach the kids to make a proper phone call. That relieved me from my fear and I could completely immerse myself in the rest of the senior project. 

Now we’re at the end of the first week. It’s hard to believe it’s been a week! It’s been great so far, and what I did the rest of the week is different from what I expected. Looking back now we’ve done counting plates, moving stuff from the attic to the locker room, making reunion pins, folding napkins, joining LinkedIn and the Proctor Alum group, alum research, and making sure the names on the theater’s chairs match with their donors. They are things that are more relevant but I still jokingly call myself an intern, because that’s what interns do. I didn’t know that’s what newbies do so that’s the lesson for this week. But I like what I’ve been doing so far, because it’s realistic: I will do things like those if I were an actual employee. I think this week really gives me experience on what to expect in a real work environment, which is precious. My goal is to learn what it feels like to work, so what I learnt so far definitely helps.

Then comes the second week. This week on top of what we’ve been doing last week, there is more interesting stuff like having meetings about the stats of Proctor funds, so it’s more straightforward to see how much we’ve raised and how much more we need to collect. This week is somehow way faster than last week, probably because I’m getting used to the work I’m doing. It’s really interesting in fact, although we call ourselves “interns” I still found pleasure in doing small but useful things. They make me feel my value (not trying to say doing errands is the only thing I can do). For sure there are greater things waiting ahead, but it’s nice to get started on small things. I learnt there are different sizes of letter envelopes this week, and sometimes people put the smaller ones to bigger envelopes so whoever gets the mail can put either cash or paychecks in them. There are surprises too, because things don’t always go as planned. Sometimes I have games or early practices, so I have to leave early accordingly. That means I won’t have enough hours in. That frustrates me because I hate it when things don’t go as planned, but obviously I can’t skip practice or games. My solution is to get my hours back on Wednesday nights, when my mentor Tracey comes in to be the awesome dorm surrogate as she is. Because she is there, my work time automatically counts because someone’s watching me. I’m so glad that I came up with that solution. It’s always fun working with Tracey, and the working environment is even more relaxed in my own dorm. It’s just fantastic to work in such a great environment with awesome people around me. I think I start to know what I should do when there’s nothing I can do, and I balance work/play better. By “nothing I can do” I mean sometimes there isn’t anything the three of us can do, so I would just head to folding napkins because it seems I will never be able to finish. Everything I do definitely helps me to get the feeling of working in an office, it gives me the essential experience and maybe the chance to think is this what I really want to do.