Leadership and Change

One of the classes for my major, Leadership and Change (which, if I recall correctly, is PAF 311 or something like that) focused on how you can incite change as a leader...imagine that. But more so, what I have learned from my internship, and the other leadership roles I have this semester, is how leadership is changing ME. I have the greatest amount of responsibility this semester thanks to my active leadership roles on campus and the groups that I am part of.

Through my internship, I have seen that leadership is huge. Because I am not always reporting to an office, I am required to take leadership and get the necessary work accomplished without someone constantly looking over my shoulder. This can make it incredibly easy to push things aside, or lose sight of the priorities I have in my life. Undertaking more leadership, has led me to better understand and reevaluate my obligations and the importance of various things in my life. This has led to great growth, and with this growth, comes the growing pains.

Thankfully, I have been able to work with others, both peers and supervisors, who have helped me understand and identify the bigger priorities in my life. Until now, I used to let a lot of the smaller details in life get to me and cause me stress. However, now I see from the efforts of others that there are much bigger responsibilities in life, and while the little things may be important, eventually, they aren't always the most important things right at that exact moment. Being able to see my peers and supervisors prioritize their lives has shown me that this efficiency allows them to make a greater impact. Not just professionally, but personally as well. The encouragement I get from those around me, as well as an understanding, is helping me succeed much more than I initially expected that I would.

Senioritis. It does exist.

One of the biggest, constant, struggles I have encountered throughout this semester is the senioritis. Anyone who has been in high school, or in college, can attest that senioritis is a thing, and boy do I have it. With my graduation date coming at the end of the semester, I am having more and more trouble taking my tasks day-by-day and I am constantly looking into the post-college future, fearfully. It is crazy to think that when we leave for winter break, I will not be coming back to ASU…at least for now. After spending the last 5ish years of my life consistently in college, it’ll be time for me to take that next step into adulthood, and that is a scary thought. As much as I know I am prepared, I am still facing the “unknown” of what I will be doing and where I will be. While trying to focus on the challenges and tasks of today, I constantly finding myself wondering about the unknowns I will be facing in the very short future.

Profile/Interview

For this blog, I am choosing to profile/interview Rick Dale, the Director for the Center of Emergency Management and Homeland Security (CEMHS), where I am completing my internship. Rick’s main role with CEMHS is all things research related. His background comes from public safety in the private sector, while working alongside various public and nonprofit agencies throughout the country. Rick got into public safety after working as a police officer for his hometown police department. He eventually began his own company, iXP Corp, which focused on public safety communication systems. After leaving the company in summer 2013, he came to ASU to help lead the CEMHS.

            Educationally, the Emergency Management/Homeland Security degrees are fairly new and uncommon. If the field is specifically EM/HS related, a Bachelor’s Degree, with appropriate work/internship experience, could be all that is needed. However, a Master’s Degree in EM/HS never looks bad either. The EM/HS career field is full of individuals who learned the job as it became a job following events like 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, etc. As a result, the formal education component is quite new.

            One thing that he would stress to someone interested in EM/HS is the idea of creativity in solutions. In addition, it is also important to not only find the solutions, but deliver them as well. A lot of the work done within this field is very proactive and requires forward-thinking. You have to think ahead and prepare for any “what-if” scenarios that you can. With the advancements of new technology, you can utilize these new advancements in EM/HS relief efforts to provide more creative, and efficient, solution delivery.

            This field interests me because it serves the public and allows for creativity and utilization of various things. It’s an opportunity to coordinate efforts between various public/private/nonprofit sectors from all over the region, state, and even the nation. At the end of the day, it will create a better environment and a better solution for our communities which will lead to improved cooperation and a stronger society.

Communication and the age of emails

Emails. All of them. Participating in this internship has cause my daily email counts to skyrocket and extended 3-4x more than I was getting per day. In addition, I have various other campus organizations and, as an instructor, also plenty of emails from students. All of this has led me to completely reorganizing my email inbox in an effort to better manage and communicate with higher priority and efficiency. My internship doesn't always involve me sitting in an office and oftentimes we will communicate daily via an email chain with 12-15 people. This makes it incredibly difficult to manage communications and even participate in the discussion when I am also in the process of going to class or working at my job. By sorting my emails appropriately and not having one giant inbox, I have learned a much better way to manage my professional/academic communications. In addition, I have also utilized the Outlook Calendar to keep a schedule for meetings/events/classes/etc. It has become very effective in helping me better manage my communication, and my time.

Hurry Up and Wait

One of the "big ideas" that has been ingrained into my brain during the time with my internship is "hurry up, and wait". While interning with CEMHS, we have been working on various different projects, and each of these projects involves working with private businesses, or government agencies. As a result, we work very diligently on these projects to push timelines and get things done; but, in return, we oftentimes wait much longer to get responses to continue the next phase of the project. Therefore, this idea of "hurry up, and wait" reflects exactly what we have been doing for this semester. Working very hard, very quickly to get the ball out of our court and back into the court of the other people we are working with has been a constant theme. This definitely creates some very hectic and stressful times when we are working on completing our end of the project, but then also creates some very large lulls in the project when we are waiting days, or sometimes even weeks, for information to return.

Career Week

As part of Career Week, I attended the Internship and Career Fair in Downtown Phoenix. This even was just like every other internship and career fair that I've attended at ASU in the past, which is good and bad. For the most part, all of the companies/agencies there have been around at the previous 2 career fairs that I have gone too. This can be a good thing though because it allows people the opportunity to build some relationships with the people from these companies/agencies. Oftentimes, it will be the same people from the same places. Unfortunately, this also means that there never really is anything that catches your eye or draws your attention because they are there time and time again. Overall, I didn't get a lot out of the event, but that's also because I am also very highly contemplating graduate school in the future. Therefore, my mind is not really set on trying to acquire a job or start a career at this time.

Life moves on, regardless if you move with it

So far, this semester has been one of the most challenging in my life. There have been quite a few unexpected circumstances that I have had to deal with that are things that I haven't encountered before. I've realized through this that the days keep going and you have to find a way to keep up with things and get tasks done, regardless of the circumstances that you may encounter. Sometimes, the last thing you want to do, or even have time to do, is sit down and work on the things you need to do so you can keep moving forward when it seems as though the world is trying to hold you back. Your mind just isn't there completely, and it makes it more difficult to focus and do a job well. Normally, I am pretty good with dealing with stress and balancing my various commitments and life, but this semester has started off very challenging and right off of the bat, I see this semester is testing my limits and teaching me some very valuable life lessons.