Spring Kwartur Reeflekshun

This quarter I began my final internship. I moved over to Seattle U and began working in Student-Athlete Academic Support. I spend most of my time tutoring, monitoring study halls, and editing papers. I also have the task of creating a program that targets reading and writing comprehension for incoming at-risk student-athletes. These could be incoming freshman or transfer students, but still have the same under-preparedness for the academic rigors of SU.
It was a perfect quarter to be studying leadership ethics with Pat Dobel as that topic comes up when dealing with student-athletes that are struggling academically. As an English major in college, I can see so many fundamental mistakes in the student's writing, but cannot (according to my personal ethics code as well as that of SU and the NCAA) change the content of their writing. I can, however, address the problems before they begin writing the papers, and ask questions while they complete the paper to steer them in the right direction. After the papers are written I can only help correct spelling and grammatical errors. This has been a difficult task, but one that teaches me to be on my toes.
Also in this quarter I have done my best to network with people in places that I would like to work. I have done some networking at the University of Utah, as well as the University of Colorado. I am currently in search of a place to live and hopefully work my way into the system from there. My mentor at SU has great contacts at Utah, and I hope to prove myself a strong enough candidate for future references from her.

Leedurchip Etheks Reeflekshun

Pat Dobel taught our final class on Leadership Ethics in the spring of 2011. The class topics were very interesting and some of the material truly had my mind engaged. However, I did not care for the emphasis on one book by Joe Badaracco, called Leading Quietly. Pat was a great teacher and had a lot of great things to say, and I saw no need o rely so much on another academia's book. In addition to the reliance on this particular text, I thought the book was difficult to decipher and unnecessarily cloudy.

One lesson we had that I thought was interesting was given in a lesson by Ed Taylor. He spoke to the class during our executive weekend in Seattle, and I believe moved the class in a very positive way. He asked, and answered, the question "is this endeavor worth the trouble?". His resounding answer was yes, and for so many reasons I cannot state them all. However, I will say that his reasoning fit well with most of the people in class, and gave us all something to think about going forward. For me personally, I think the success of one student-athlete, in an honest and ethical way, is enough to justify working in this field. I think Mr. Taylor may have come to the same answer.