Hannah Mountford Week 5

Activities:

• Set up weekly meetings with Housing and DOS
• Supervision
• Finalized RA presentation

Reflection:

At this point in the semester, I have completed most of my hours for practicum, and now I am just working on tying up some lose ends. One thing that I am finding really near is through my relationship that I have built with the Dean of Students this summer, I have also gained a new role with housing and residence life. This past week I have been able to serve as a liaison with housing and DOS while I scheduled our weekly meetings throughout the school year as well as touch base and make sure that everything was a go for our leadership training presentations that involve DOS. I think this new role has really allowed me to branch out and create new networks as we talked about this past week in online class. 

I also used my networking skills in other ways this week as I was able to help shawn in his practicum experience. Chapter 6 talks about the fact that new Student Affairs professionals need professional involvement and connection with colleagues as the begin to establish their professional identity. One thing that I read a couple weeks back in one of Shawn's blog posts was that he was very interested in getting experience in facilities. Throughout this past year I have build a pretty good relationship with the director of housing facilities and on Monday we had a meeting with him. I asked Shawn to come with me at the end of the meeting so he could get a chance to meet Fred Mock, and we could see if we could get him some experience in housing facilities. Fred was completely opened to this idea and it worked out that Shawn will be able to get a lot of good hands on experience Monday and Tuesday. 

One thing that I really value about networking is that it never ends, and you don't always do it for yourself. By creating a relationship with Fred, I am able to go to him when I need help, but I am also able to introduce others to him and help others network through my experience. I never thought that I would be in shoes where I am the one with the connections, but through my assistantship I have really gotten the privilege of meeting some really great people who do very interesting things and helping Shawn get this new experience was one of the first chances I have gotten to professionally network for others by knowing someone in my student affairs career.