It is not just a recruiting ploy, McDaniel College really does change lives for the thousands of of students who walk across the stage inside Gill Gymnasium at the end of their four years.
Sure I did not think about it then but now that I'm on the other side of it, there were, and probably still are, so many subtle things that made McDaniel what it is.
1. The Honor Code: “I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this piece of work, nor have I knowingly tolerated any violation of the Honor Code.”
Sure who doesn't remember the half-witted conversation in Dr. Neal's Public Policy class about what happens if you sign your name to the Honor Code and you knowingly violated the policy and one of your classmates says "you get hit by lightning." Even though it was said in jest, looking back that point in time was when you knew the Honor Code had legs. It made you afraid of doing something unethical therefore made you a better person. (One would hope.) That is why the Honor Code works and more schools need to look towards it.
2. "Choices!"
I don't think there is a person who graduated from McDaniel who has not seen the play they put on Sunday night just before your first day of classes only once. Comprised of upperclassmen - mostly theater arts majors - "Choices" is a small skit-based play dealing with all the little nuances of college life from - plagiarism to alcohol to drugs to cheating, anything is game - that the incoming freshmen may encounter. It is not the administration telling the freshmen what not to do, it is their peers - the people they are more apt to listen to and follow. And the best part about it is that it is so well played out and funny, that even the upperclassmen who already sat through it once want to come back and watch it again. Alumni Hall is packed with standing room only that night.
I only got two for right now but these are the two things that I hope to bring to Newbury in the future because I know, speaking from past experiences that it works. Even if we only do a "Choices!" type of thing in athletics it still would make a huge difference. That current upperclassmen student-athletes can run the show and be a part of athletic orientation at the beginning of the year.
One of my long term goals is to be able to get Newbury on the list of Colleges that Change Lives and I know they can get there.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Monday, September 19, 2011
A Feeling of Accomplishment
So even though I officially started August 8th, I really have on been "on the job" as a full-time SID for about three weeks and needless to say I've been killin'em.
In the last two weeks, I've been able to get two of our student-athletes (both freshmen) into their hometown newspapers one of which included my first interaction with the outside media. And no I do not mean blogs I mean an actual newspaper called and wanted to interview one of our first year volleyball players. I was pretty stoked about that. And a week before that one of my golfers' hometown paper published part of the release I wrote about him earning co-medalist honors.
But it is only just the beginning. There is more to come.
A while back I watched the late Randy Pausch's lecture on "Time Management" but it is not a video you can watch just one time. Every time I re-watch it I learn something new. It's not like it changes but there are just many subtle things he says that you don't get the first or second time.
Today I felt like the "real deal." I had a long laundry list of things to do but yet got everything that needed to get done today done and I did it because I watched Randy's lecture.
My to-do list for September 19th:
1. Send/Request Rosters to opposing SIDs
Even though we have a lot of games this week, the majority of them are away and this item on my to-do list did not take much time at all so I completed this with relative ease and within a couple of minutes.
2. Update/input volleyball statistics from this weekend's tournament
The next thing I tackled was inputting the volleyball statistics from the past weekend's tournament at Stevens Tech. They had four games in two days and Stevens Tech did not do in-game stats. In addition to getting our stats from our coach I had to get the opponents' stats so we could have a completed boxscore to send to the NCAA. It was the most time consuming thing on my to-do list of the day. But yet I managed to get it done before 11.
3. 11-12 Student-Athlete Newspapers
This item on the to-do list is a work-in-progress. It is a spread sheet with all the student-athletes and their hometown newspaper contacts broken down by sport. I started working on it in mid-August and the idea was that I was going to use it when I needed an email contact of an athlete's hometown paper if they had an amazing game, match or something noteworthy around campus. If you were to put it into Stephen Covey's four-quadrants, it would go into the "not important and not due soon" box. It was a great work study project that I was able to delegate to a few work-study who came up and after I told them what I was doing it for they completely understood. Maybe they wanted to do it because it will benefit them in the long run. When people see you are set to do things for them, they will be more willing to help you.
4. Update student-athlete headshots on website
Yay! We finally got the headshots in! It is a double-edged sword though. Sure it's great that we got them in to put up on the website, but the kicker is that I'm the one that has to update the website and put about 50 student-athletes headshots on their bio page. But with the help of two student workers, we were able to get this task accomplished in less than an hour. Ben and Chris did an awesome job at getting the headshots up for soccer, x-country, tennis and volleyball. Hurray for delegation! It allowed me to contact Presto and get the cropping tool fixed so we don't have to crop in a separate program. We can upload original size of photos to the back end of the website and crop from there. Awesomeness!
5. Update women's tennis match file
While Chris and Ben were helping with the headshots, I was able to re-upload the Lesley tennis file that Ryan sent me.
6. Volleyball student-athlete phone interview
Last Friday David Drew (no not J.D. - even though David is his real first name) of the Kalamazoo (Mich.) Gazette called me asking to set up an interview with one of our volleyball players. Unfortunately the team had just left for New Jersey so I set it up for this afternoon at 3:30. She came up at three and we were able to get the interview done by 3:30 so I could meet the rest of the golf team at Stone Meadow for practice.
Despite a very hectic day it was a very productive day when you really look back on it. Sure I still have things left on my to-do list but it is the little things that matter. No one operates in a vacuum and when you learn how to delegate it makes you're life so much easier and a lot less stressful.
In the last two weeks, I've been able to get two of our student-athletes (both freshmen) into their hometown newspapers one of which included my first interaction with the outside media. And no I do not mean blogs I mean an actual newspaper called and wanted to interview one of our first year volleyball players. I was pretty stoked about that. And a week before that one of my golfers' hometown paper published part of the release I wrote about him earning co-medalist honors.
But it is only just the beginning. There is more to come.
A while back I watched the late Randy Pausch's lecture on "Time Management" but it is not a video you can watch just one time. Every time I re-watch it I learn something new. It's not like it changes but there are just many subtle things he says that you don't get the first or second time.
Today I felt like the "real deal." I had a long laundry list of things to do but yet got everything that needed to get done today done and I did it because I watched Randy's lecture.
My to-do list for September 19th:
1. Send/Request Rosters to opposing SIDs
Even though we have a lot of games this week, the majority of them are away and this item on my to-do list did not take much time at all so I completed this with relative ease and within a couple of minutes.
2. Update/input volleyball statistics from this weekend's tournament
The next thing I tackled was inputting the volleyball statistics from the past weekend's tournament at Stevens Tech. They had four games in two days and Stevens Tech did not do in-game stats. In addition to getting our stats from our coach I had to get the opponents' stats so we could have a completed boxscore to send to the NCAA. It was the most time consuming thing on my to-do list of the day. But yet I managed to get it done before 11.
3. 11-12 Student-Athlete Newspapers
This item on the to-do list is a work-in-progress. It is a spread sheet with all the student-athletes and their hometown newspaper contacts broken down by sport. I started working on it in mid-August and the idea was that I was going to use it when I needed an email contact of an athlete's hometown paper if they had an amazing game, match or something noteworthy around campus. If you were to put it into Stephen Covey's four-quadrants, it would go into the "not important and not due soon" box. It was a great work study project that I was able to delegate to a few work-study who came up and after I told them what I was doing it for they completely understood. Maybe they wanted to do it because it will benefit them in the long run. When people see you are set to do things for them, they will be more willing to help you.
4. Update student-athlete headshots on website
Yay! We finally got the headshots in! It is a double-edged sword though. Sure it's great that we got them in to put up on the website, but the kicker is that I'm the one that has to update the website and put about 50 student-athletes headshots on their bio page. But with the help of two student workers, we were able to get this task accomplished in less than an hour. Ben and Chris did an awesome job at getting the headshots up for soccer, x-country, tennis and volleyball. Hurray for delegation! It allowed me to contact Presto and get the cropping tool fixed so we don't have to crop in a separate program. We can upload original size of photos to the back end of the website and crop from there. Awesomeness!
5. Update women's tennis match file
While Chris and Ben were helping with the headshots, I was able to re-upload the Lesley tennis file that Ryan sent me.
6. Volleyball student-athlete phone interview
Last Friday David Drew (no not J.D. - even though David is his real first name) of the Kalamazoo (Mich.) Gazette called me asking to set up an interview with one of our volleyball players. Unfortunately the team had just left for New Jersey so I set it up for this afternoon at 3:30. She came up at three and we were able to get the interview done by 3:30 so I could meet the rest of the golf team at Stone Meadow for practice.
Despite a very hectic day it was a very productive day when you really look back on it. Sure I still have things left on my to-do list but it is the little things that matter. No one operates in a vacuum and when you learn how to delegate it makes you're life so much easier and a lot less stressful.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
10 Years
It was a warm, sunny Tuesday morning. Not a cloud in the sky. School had just started the Thursday prior. It was just another day for a high school junior. I was kind of disappointed because the previous night’s Red Sox game against the Yankees in the Bronx was rained out. Sitting in my second period Honors U.S. History class with one of my all-time favorite teacher’s, Mr. Hayward, discussing the Chesapeake, Jamestown and New England colonies.
Mr. Hayward stepped out of the room for a bit and came back with the shocking news that two planes had hit the World Trade Center in New York. We go from talking about the Jamestown colony to watching history in the making on a grainy television that you could barely make out the Pentagon.
For the rest of the day that was all that was discussed. From my next period in accounting to sitting down with friends at lunch to talking about the day’s events at the end of the day with Madame Williams in French class IN French. Just as we start to talk about it we hear an F-18 fly overhead.
Fortunately for myself I did not know anyone directly involved but every year all the memories rush back like it was yesterday. Yet every year I’m constantly reminded one one thing. Today's college students barely have any recollection of it.
They were not old enough to truly understand what was going on. The seniors were just entering sixth grade while the new Class of 2015 were eight years old and what do you remember when you’re eight? I certainly would not know the true significance of four planes crashing into two tall buildings, a building in the nation’s capital or some field in central Pennsylvania as an eight year old.
We I have now moved into a new age where kids are not going to be asking “where were you when Kennedy was assassinated?” but in fact “where were you on September 11th 2001?
I still can not believe it has been 10 years since that fateful day. And even though we have killed the ring leader it does not change what happened 10 years ago. Sure Bin Laden needed to die a horrible and tragic death but it doesn't bring the lives lost on that tragic day in 2001. Hopefully it brings some closure to those families but they still have to live every day without their mother, father, sister, brother, son, daughter, husband or wife.
Let us remember and never forget those who have lost their lives on 9/11/01.
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