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Wednesday
Whoa! Disney Internships! This morning's key note was about the scheme that Disney runs. This is a completely new way of working for us in the UK. Disneys Interships are entry level jobs (housekeeping, retail etc) provided for one year (paid) BUT the staff study at the Disney University alongside their work, some courses even receive credits! They recruit in the UK and I'll forward the details soon.
My next session was "Adding Reflection to Student Employment" which looked at getting students to think about what they are learning through their work. Massacusetts Institute of Technology run a series of Dinner Sessions where students have a meal with a facilitator and talk about their experiences. They support their working students through peer mentoring too which seems a really useful way of getting students to think about their work.
Tuesday
I typed up Tuesday's notes at 5 am this morning (usa time) as the jet lag/time difference thing is still going on, the blooming system threw me out and I lost everthing! Great sessions included one on Diversity and helping students to be culturally competant in preperation for graduation, I think this a great area to explore at the NASES conference - how are our services getting students ready for the world beyond University. Dr Valerie Greene-King spoke about how we all have microinequities which are demonstrations of our attitudes through our behaviour - and we all suffer from "isms" which we need to be honest about to move on and overcome them (racism, sexism, ageism etc etc). We all have differenct perspectived on what these definitions are which is where offence can poor communication can occur.
The next session was much more light hearted and looked at the leadership style of Santa Claus, I'll share this with you all nearer the time (how many shopping days left?).
The most challenging, and probably therefore most useful session of the day was how to conduct research to monitor the impact on student employment. I think this is an area that the NASES board needs to discuss particularly given the current graduate jobs market - the impact of SE may become critical to some students and employers.
As I'm here there are some very important Baseball games taking place each evening, I asked someone last night if the kids played it in school and was told they play in when they're born! True enough you can buy baby gloves and balls in Downtown Disney!
Monday
Today was the "get to know you" sessions. We had a ice breaker where we were given a few M and M's, the colour of your sweetie determned what you told the group about yourself, e.g. yellow was dream job, blue was favourite memory. On reflection I gave honest but quite reserved answers some delegates really opened up about their hope, dreams, memories and lives which I thought unusual. As we all described where we work it was striking how the institutions here are very distinct from each other rather than just being geographically spllit.
Yesterday afternoon I had time to myself, I did some shopping and was bowled over by the service I received. Not in a cheesy "have a nice day" way but a genuine desire to make your experience better, for example, in a clothes shop I was gathering things to try on, the assistant came and asked may she take them and leave them in a dressing room for me whilst I continued to shop rather than I carry them around. In Gap the queue was massive but the young girl on the till wasn't phased, calmly radio'd for backup and then continued to helping her customer to try on perfumes.
Sunday
After hours getting through immigration and customs (had to declare the shortbread I brought for the silent auction) I've finally arrived and got my hands on the conference programme. As ever two of the sessions that I'm desperate to go to clash: "Leadership Secrets of Santa Clause" and "In Introduction to True Colours" which uses colour to identify your personality type, today I feel I would be yellow, I've lost my WiFi virginity and managed to log on in my hotel room , the sun is shining and I'm shortly off Christmas shopping in Downtown Disney.
In the interests of the environment - guilt over the airmiles- I got a shuttle bus to the hotel from the airport. Clearly like minded people did the same, I shared with another conference delegate (no suprise there) but also with two temp agency managers who are in Orlando for their national agency conference and a widening participation officer from Ohio who is here for a personal development course called AVATAR, she explained its all about living your life deliberately, an interesting shift in behavior that caused around an hour's sleeplessness thinking how did I get to where I am today? Definently not deliberately, a series of happy accidents perhaps? Is it time to take control? I think it may be, so I started by deliberately finishing off breakfast with cherry and cinnamon crumble!!
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