During this meeting, I enjoyed talking to my Summerfields supervisor, John Esteves. Through this reflection and meeting with John, I realized that though my employment at Summerfields is not going to necessarily help me in terms of my career or what I want to do with my future, it is going to give me the necessary skills to work with people. During this meeting, I realized that what I want to learn during this semester and become more aware of is how the tasks that our managers assign us to do at work will translate into a career in possibly writing or media.
When John asked me how I see working at Summerfields complementing my academics and extracurriculars, I began to see how my time management skills were being developed and how I now have the independence to decide how I want to spend my time. In high school, many of the activities or classes that I took were already scheduled for me and I did not get to choose where I spent my time and why I was doing the work that I was doing. Most of it was required of me so I did not have to be intentional. However, the more I go about college I realize the choices that I have and how it is on me to decide how I want to spend my time here. I realize that I prioritize my Summerfields job and how I find time to make room for more shifts. By prioritizing this job, I see how my time management skills have become stronger as I set aside time to do my work, go to my swim practices and meets, pick up shifts, and do my own independent activities and relax.
During this meeting, we also discussed what I would hope to develop during this job within the six Ideals into Practice competencies. I wanted to develop my communication and collaboration skills by working with my co-workers and finding the best way to work with my team through communication. I realized that by working with different people on different shifts the dynamic of how our team works can change, and sometimes I have trouble adapting to working with new people. I hoped that I could be more flexible working with people by developing my communication skills and being clear about what I needed help with and what I should be doing within our team.
Through this reflection, it was helpful discussing how John could best support me in my role and how all the managers could best be receptive to employees’ feedback. During this time, I reflected on how it is very helpful that all of the managers work with the student employees each shift and how having them on the floor makes it easier for there to be a clear line of communication between employees and managers. In my job at Olin, I am not required to check in with my supervisor every shift and I rarely see him around as shelving is more of an independent job. However, I expressed to John how I get to know each of the managers and how the workplace allows me to feel respected and appreciated because of how the managers are constantly with us.
