Mentorship

Today in class Colleen and David presented on mentorship. We talked about formal and informal mentoring as well as peer mentoring. We watched a short film about peer support which was very interesting. It was solely related to the healthcare industry, and it talked about making peer support more common, to the point where a person would have someone a peer support personal on their medical team. Professor Bonica even chimed in by telling us about some peer mentorship in a hospital type setting where patients even help each other by recommending treatments. Role model mentoring is what I feel is most common to me. It would be when a boss or a teacher is a mentor to a student or an employee. Colleen mentioned reciprocal mentoring and I had never really heard of that before but it is extremely interesting. Both parties are able to help and mentor each other, and we were able to watch a TEDTALK about it. The guy in the talk believes that mentor relationships should not be mentor mentee, but mentor mentor. He says that he will only agree to be someones mentor if they agree to be his. I don't think I agree with this, because I don't think I would deny being someones mentor just because I don't think I could learn from them. I believe that we learn from every single person that we come into contact with in our lives. With this being said, I don't think that we should go into a mentor relationship only wanting to learn from them, but willing to teach. This summer I am hoping that my preceptor for my internship, Jennifer Foley, will become my mentor. I know that there is so much that I can learn from her, but I don't necessarily see any skills that she could learn from me, as she's already been in the field for about 20 plus years. I am sure that at some point over the summer she will learn something from me, whether it be on a personal level or a work level.  

Experience Vs. Payment

As of today I am facing quite the dilemma. I have interviewed at a few different places for the summer, and I hadn't heard back from anywhere until today. One of my interviews was at the Critical Care Department for Boston Children's Hospital, one of them was at Massachusetts Eye and Ear in Project Management, and the last (my favorite) was at Dana Farber with the Administrative Director. The first two are paid, but I haven't heard back from them yet. The last is unpaid as of now, but I just got an offer today! I am over the moon about it because it is my first choice, besides the unpaid part. I feel like I would gain the most experience at Dana Farber, as I would be shadowing the Administrative Director: Jenn Foley, and attending all of her importnat meetings. She is a fountain of knowledge, and someone whom I would love to have as a mentor. The only problem is that I, like most of us, need and want to get paid. I have to make the difficult decision of sacrificing what I believe would be a great experience in order to earn money, or take the unpaid internship and work my butt off seven days of the week. I would need to get a part time job for the weekends so that I can make ends meet. As of right now, I am leaning towards accepting the offer, as it is what I want and where I feel I fit in the best. I have a feeling this wont't be the last difficult decision I make regarding my career, I just hope I'm making the right choice!

Health Leader Forge

Professor Bonica has an audio blog that he does known as The Health Leader Forge. He interviews healthcare professionals who tend to have a senior role, and then he posts the audio clip on his blog site. I was a co-guest speaker on his blog today, along with one of my fellow classmates Carly. It was definitely a new learning experience for me, but I really enjoyed it and I think I learned a lot. We decided to interview Sue DeMarco, who is the Director of Organizational Development. I hadn't known much about this job before interviewing Sue, but it is very interesting. She has an extensive background, and her career has taken her to a lot of different places. Sue was very easy to talk to, and she seemed like she enjoyed sharing about herself. I feel like this was a valuable experience because not only was I able to make a connection with somebody in the industry, but I also got to learn a lot, and gain experience in speaking with executives. Professor Bonica, Carly, and I are going to edit the audio clip a bit to clean it up, and then we will be posting it online. I will be sure to share the link once that happens.

Performance Evaluations

Tomorrow's class is going to be run by Caroline, Reagan, and Carly. Their topic of the day is going to be performance evaluations and they have given us a few questions to answer as pre-work which I intend to answer here.

1. What characteristics do you think would make a good performance evaluation?

When I think of a good performance evaluation a few things come to mind. First off it would entail a face to face meeting with a superior or supervisor. During this meeting the supervisor should take the time to give a detailed overview of how they feel you have been performing at your job. I feel like not only should they take the time to give constructive criticism and tell you areas that you need to improve upon, but they should also tell you what things you have been excelling at. I think it is also important to discuss the future. The time should be taken to talk about the path that you're on, where you see yourself going, and the steps that are necessary in order to get there.

2. What characteristics do you think would make a poor performance evaluation?

In my opinion a poor performance evaluation would either be no evaluation at all, or a very brief one where they kind of either say "great job!" or "you could do better." I really feel like there needs to be a lot of communication because this is a very important part of your career. It is a time to learn how to advance and be the best you can at a job. 

3. What type of categories do you think would be found on a performance evaluation?

The categories that I believe would be found are, work ethic, timelines, leadership, attitude, areas for improvement, room for growth.  

4. If you have had any experience with performance evaluations, come prepared to discuss your experiences in class. 

I have never necessarily had a formal job performance evaluation before, however there has been a time when my boss at my current job has briefly spoken with me. It was about a year after i became a hostess, and I had started to emerge as a leader. He sat with me for a few minutes and told me I had been exceeding his expectations, and then asked me if I would train the new hires, which I now do. 

Two

Today marked the start of the second part of our semester. We have officially transitioned into the "two" portion of the class. Sarah and I were the first ones to present, and I think it went really well. I was much more comfortable this time around, and I think overall our presentation was a lot more engaging and we were able to get our points across a lot more effectively than we did the first time. We knew we had to change a few things about our presentation from the first time around, and a big part of that was getting the class more involved and active. We had a few activities this time that went well and were really fun. We also had a few video clips which was nice, especially the one from The Office which was really funny. I really enjoyed the subject we presented on as well, I thought it was really interesting and I was excited to learn more about it and discuss it as a group. Effective communication is an important subject, especially when it comes to our professional careers. We watched a TedTalk in class and one of the most important messages that I personally took away from it was when she said that learning how to have an effective conversations in one of the most important skills that you can learn. It is definitely something I want to improve upon, more specifically my verbal communication. I need to work on eliminating words such as "like" and "um." I also tend to get very tongue tied while speaking, especially when I'm nervous. I have trouble getting my point across and therefore I am not very effective. As far as nonverbal communication I feel as though I am pretty good at that. My body language is usually professional and I use gestures appropriately. Moving on with the rest of the semester I need to post more on my blog, and I also need to contact my mentor again soon. I am excited to talk to her and learn from her.

Hectic Life

The last week or so has been extremely overwhelming. I have been juggling work, going to classes, studying for midterms, job interviews, extracurricular, all while trying to remain sane. While doing all of this I have been trying not to let anything slip, but unfortunately I haven't been able to blog as much lately as I would've liked to. The last class was really interesting. We had other people take the MBTI personality test for us which was really interesting. I had my college roommate take it for me whom I've known my whole life, and she got a much different answer than I did. Then I had Sarah take it for me who I sit next to in class everyday and she got all the same results as me except she had me as an extrovert instead of an introvert. We decided that this was most likely because she doesn't know me much outside the classroom which is when I tend to be more introverted. I believe that my roommate has a lot of varied answers because the way I act around her is when I am the most comfortable version of myself. It was very interesting to see the results. This week also summed up our first segment of classes known as "One." My group and I are going to be the first ones to present on the topic of "Two" the Monday after spring break. We are going our presentation on accountability, constructive criticism, and high reliability. I am more excited to do this presentation than I was to do the first one, mostly because now I know what to expect. I have been able to see what works well for teaching styles and what the class responds to the most and I think this will make it so that we can have a more meaningful presentation that people will actually learn from and even enjoy. I am also excited to reach out to my mentor again. I am curious to see what she's been up to and if she has any advice that she can give me about my next presentation.