And so it comes to an end. Spring quarter is over shortly, and in 3 weeks I'll be graduating. Spring quarter was by far my favorite of the quarters not spent on campus with America's Team. This was probably partly because there was only 1 class to contest with the demands of my internship, which have grown considerably, but also because the topic of the class enabled us to finally get into some of the deeper issues we'd been skirting around all year. Ethical leadership in sports, particularly intercollegiate athletics, could probably be a year long course taught every year in a program, with all the different angles, and issues that arise on almost a monthly basis. It's an ever evolving concept, that continues to grow as college sports continue to grow.
What I learned in this class that I will bring along into my professional career, is that there are many ways to lead people or an organization, and that you don't have to be a big personality or a people-pleaser to do so successfully. Some of the best leaders, lead quietly, and they work to build their personal and professional capital within the group they're leading so that when difficult decisions need to be made, regardless of the outcome, everyone knows that the decision was not made hastily, nor was it made with malice.
For me, working with student-athletes, especially at-risk student athletes, it is crucial to build up a reserve of personal capital with them because many of them don't trust authority figures, and before you will get anything out of them, they need to know they can trust you. Once they trust you, or feel that you have their best interest at heart, they will open up and work with you. Once that trust is set, they also become less defensive and frustrated with you when tough decisions need to be made (i.e. - you need to report that they missed class to their coach, or when you have to incorporate new tutors or mentors into their academic plans). When this personal capital is stored up, the students realize that you're not making these decisions to hold them back, but rather to help them move forward.
When I look back on where I started almost a year ago, I can confidently say that I am ready to work with student-athletes in one of the most challenging components to their career as a student-athlete - the "student" part. While I was confident I could handle this career choice when I started the program, through the variety of classes I've taken and the experiences I've had at my internship I now feel that I have a much more solid foundation on which to continue to build. Where I had knowledge of pitfalls for student-athletes before, I now have understanding of how it is they come to find themselves in these situations, and having that understanding enables me as an educator and as a leader to better serve them.
I also think that at this point in my experience that I've gained some expertise in some areas. As I mentioned in my winter quarter review, I think that I have established a very good working relationship with the students that I worked with on a weekly basis as well as some of those I only knew in passing. I learned how to work with each of my students to get the most out of them by learning what motivated them, when they needed to get something off their chest before we could move forward with their academics and when to push and when to back off a little and give them a minute to deal with things. During my time at my internship, I also managed to form a relationship with some of the more difficult students, ones the counselors even had trouble getting through to. Some who wouldn't speak more than 10 words in an academic meeting with their counselors, would have full blown conversations with me. I had earned their trust. I think that I was able to work on earning this trust and this relationship with all the students because I had learned, from classes like the Sociology of Education, some of the reasons why students may come in with a chip on their shoulder. Understanding that, allowed me to approach them from a different angle and with different techniques than others, which made them realize that we were on the same page, and that I understood the challenges they faced. I also think that understanding the legal and regulatory concepts behind many of the rules and regulations of the NCAA enabled me to explain things like bylaws etc. to them in a way that they had never been explained before so that they at least had an understanding of the rules they were being held to.
I think that I also gained a level of expertise in advanced time-management skills. I had a lot going on in my position at my internship, particularly during the spring semester. Not only was I meeting once or twice a week with 10 at-risk student athletes as a mentor, doing class checks, running data reports on tutoring appointments, and advising students, I was also running the student-athlete textbook loan program providing textbooks to those S-A's receiving books as a part of their scholarship. I had to learn to plan out my day around student meetings and other responsibilities to make trips to the bookstore to place orders for students' books, pick up the books and then distribute them to the proper students while maintaining the proper records for compliance purposes of which students received which books, and whether they were all returned etc. The textbook loan program is a daunting program for anyone to take on, when that is their sole job duty, but when partnered with everything else I was working on, it became extremely challenging to make sure everything was getting done and done well. I think that having the tight deadlines within the IAL program forced me to hone my time-management skills down to a science, which definitely helped me with doing the same at my internship. Also being able to set a good example for my students as far as time-management skills go was a great way to show them that I can do it and you can too.
There are many things I've learned over the past year both through class work and the experience in my internship, and some of it may not even be consciously grasped until later, when I am actively participating in my career, as I don't think you realize all you've learned until you are utilizing it every day. I do, however, feel that I am prepared to tackle the challenges that will arise in my career, and I look forward to taking my first steps into a career in college athletics.
