Week 6 - Hannah Mountford

Activities:

• Supervision
• Final RA presentation

Experience

This weeks chapter was all about enjoying the journey, and that is something that I think I definitely did. While my experience in DOS may not have been what I thought it would have exactly been. It was definitely what I know I needed at this point in my life. The Dean of Students office helped me become more administratively focused, and that is something that I feel like our program is not extremely heavy on. I know that it is easy to lose sight of the goal when you are not receiving what you think you should be getting in terms of experience, but I would not change my practicum experience for anything. 

Each week I have been able to reflect with the weekly blog and realize how cool of an opportunity I was able to take advantage of by working with some really great people. While I may not have had this insight earlier on in the semester, I think chapter 8 and 10 really put everything into perspective for me. Not everyone gets to do all of the great things that I have been privileged to do, and as much as I could sit back and stress out how the DOS was not "exactly" what I thought it could have been, now that I have completed my hours and was able to reflect upon my experience I realized that I gained some extremely valuable skills. 

I was able to network a ton. I have made some very good contacts that I know are only going to help me out in the future. I was also able to see what a Dean of Students office is, and what it looks like on a day to day basis. This really helped me in terms of deciding if this is a career path in which I would like to embark on in the future, and I believe that it is something that I am still extremely interested in. And finally, I was just given the overall autonomy to work how I wanted, and create something that, while beneficial to them, had a great flair of my personality. 

Being able to enjoy the journey really helps you count your blessings. I am really appreciative of our weekly reflective posts because they helped put everything into perspective for me. I am definitely going to recommend the Dean of Students office in the future, because I know that it may not exactly be what you want or what you thought it was going to be, but it will be so much more, you just have to look at it from a different perspective.