Reflection Journal #5

Since we are such a new cohort that is still under development, my partner and I felt that there were not many norms associated with the cohort. So as far as a request to have any change to the norms, I feel as if our new structure that was just established was made too recently to analyze the norms that come along with the structure.

However, we do have the structure of positions present in the cohort, and I have concerns that I think should be addressed properly. My first concern is that the four chairs: service, finance, activities, and communication; should not have any more authority than any of the respective committee members. For example, the communication chair should not have power to decide what the committee wants. Instead, the chairs simply should serve as a representative voice for the committee. From what I have heard, it feels like some chairs seem to think that they have power to decide what is best for the committee, and I don’t think that is a good structure to have. Also, these positions of leadership do not have any rules, regulations, or guidelines on what to do, so stepping into the position can be ambiguous. Especially with the service and communication committees, they do not have much of an active role or presence as do the finance and activities committees. If we want to equally represent, we have to be equal. However, since activities and finance for those activities play such a big role in this cohort, we could possibly see the merging of two committees into one. For example, service could be merged with activities since we only have three members in service currently and activities have nearly six or seven members. This could ensure efficiency and a clear consensus on the direction of the cohort, and I feel that it would be a big step in the right direction on what we want to establish ourselves as.

In my opinion, the communication committee is a conundrum in and of itself. Why do we have a committee specified for communication? I feel that communication is such a universal term that it should just be of habit that we have communication among each other. I know the communication committee is responsible for creating methods of communication among the members, but communication among one another is a self-governing topic. Instead I believe that the communication committee should be transformed into a promotion or marketing committee that is focused on advertising the cohort to outside sponsors and other potential companies. I believe that this will be beneficial to us as a cohort as well. Communication is something that we all participate in, and having a committee who governs how we communicate is pretty absurd (in my opinion). If we have a problem in the way we communicate, we should just be outright and state what problem we are having, instead of having pluralistic ignorance. This will lead to the most effective method of operating as a cohesive cohort.

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Reflection Journal #4

When thinking about the performing stage in relevance to the LEAD with Honors cohort, I feel that because of the way the group is structured and that we are the first ones to actually participate in this program, we will mostly be stuck in the forming, storming, and norming phases. We are already in the second year of the four year program, and I feel as if we are trying to establish ourselves as a cohort mostly, which is taking up most of our time in the forming stage. Since we will have cohorts of the LEAD with Honors program that follows us, we are basically the ‘forming’ and ‘norming’ cohort. By the time we are finished doing all of this, we will probably see other cohorts that follow us do most of the ‘performing’.

The way our LEAD with Honors course schedule is set up is that we take the one hour class in the spring of our freshman year, a three hour course in the fall of our sophomore year, a three hour seminar course and a three hour internship in our junior year, a three hour capstone research seminar and a three hour capstone writing seminar in our senior year. Now let me put this into perspective for you. Since this is a four year program for advanced honors students, this program requires us, as students, to stay for four years. When choosing the cohort members, most of them are likely to have many AP, IB, and dual enrollment credits. For example, I came in with 9 credits and then gained 6 more over the summer, so I am a semester ahead of the average sophomore, and will be a junior by the end of this semester.

Now, with that in mind, think about the way the cohort is structured. In the freshman seminar class, we barely knew each other. Then, when this course comes along, we saw a drop in membership from 30 members to 24 members. I know for a fact that one of my friends dropped due to the way the structure is in requiring us to stay for four years, and also because of the fact that she plans on transferring. Membership retention is a big problem for us already. We already saw a 20% decrease in members. My other thought goes back to when we were discussing about the rewards of this cohort, and what it can offer us. Most said that the internship is the biggest reward. Since the internship is in our junior year, how many do you think we would see drop this cohort by the time that finishes? I feel that membership retention is our biggest problem facing the cohort today, and since we are so stuck in the forming and storming phase, it causes us to see this decline. The information that the book outlined about the rarity of the performance phase did not surprise me one bit.

As you know, I am a pessimist when it comes to this cohort, but only because I want to keep a rational mind when thinking about the development of the ‘first class’ to participate in this program. It isn’t to mean any harm. I know that we are free to decide what we want to get out of this cohort, but to actually align with the performance stage of group development, this idea of the ‘LEAD with Honors cohort’ should have had more time with development, BEFORE letting members join it, because even though it is a four year journey and we are setting a name for ourselves, I just feel like it was too rushed in the process of planning what the overall goal and mission of the cohort is. This is only my opinion though, as I know some other members of the cohort love to take action and love the way it is set up currently, however, I think we can all agree that the structure and the way the cohort concept was drawn up is a tad underwhelming. This, in turn, will assist us in NEVER reaching the performance stage, and we probably will not see the performance stage in action of the LEAD with Honors cohort for years to come.

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Reflection Journal #3

During my college experience at Georgia State University and with the Honors College, I have experienced many engagements with downward social comparison. Even though it may sound arrogant; because I am with the Honors College, it is a natural comparison process with my friends. The majority of my friends are not with the Honors College, so when I tell them about the great accomplishments that I am achieving with it, such as my UAP job, my participation with LEAD with Honors, and a variety of other social events, I feel like I am more involved than that of my non-Honors College counterparts. For example, my roommate last year was not in the Honors College, but I was. We were taking the same class, which was POLS 1101, except my class was an Honors class and his was just a regular class. When we compared our syllabi, my course seemed less stressful even though the course only had two tests that determined your entire grade. By the way, I made an A in the class. Besides this, I didn’t seem all that stressed because I already knew how Honors courses worked compared to regular courses, and that I was going to do well. This boosted my entire self esteem level and made me feel good about my participation with the Honors College. I also felt bad for my roommate who had to struggle with his POLS 1101 course, to the point where he was not learning the material as well, and just became frustrated with the topic; and was very anti-political science. While he saw me performing well in my American Government course and he was struggling, he made an upward social comparison, which did lower his self-esteem levels a bit, but he took the initiative to ask me for help and strove to do better in the course.

At this point in the semester, the applications for the Honors College had gone out for potential applicants, and my roommate ended up applying. He told me that he wanted to be a part of it because of all the opportunities I was being offered; as well as wanting to receive that quality education where he would actually learn something instead of just studying for tests the day before the exam. I am glad that he made the upward social comparison to how I was doing since it boosted my confidence levels, as well as painted him a picture of what he wanted to make himself known for. When the results came back, we celebrated as he was eventually accepted into the Honors College! Even though we are not roommates now, I wanted to wish him the best of luck with all his endeavors and am glad that he saw an image in me and strove to perform better in school, as well as becoming more involved by becoming employed and serving his community with various civic engagement opportunities.

As for our group project and how our selection process is going, we are hoping to each bring a topic on Friday during class so we can discuss what we want to do. We are just kind of going with the flow as of right now, and we will have a confirmed decision (hopefully) by this coming Friday. I had the idea of correlating studies between children in the relation to college students, we just don’t know what we want to have our topic as. All we know right now is that we want to include children in our project.

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Reflection Journal #2

One group in particular that I can remember that I joined deliberately was the Patton Hall Community Council. As a freshman, you always hear your elders telling you to get involved in your first year of college, so this group was one that I joined to participate and build leadership skills. To be on the council, you had to go through an election process and be voted in by your peers in the building. So, since I was living in Patton Hall, I had to connect with every resident on a personal level in order to get votes and also to get a better understanding of the possible representation I had to bring forth to my potential council. Even though it is not a group that EVERYONE can just join, the way I connected with the group still connects greatly to some of the concepts mentioned in Chapter 4 of our book.

The election process was rough. We had to participate in debates with our fellow competition, and since we are all freshmen in Patton Hall, we were all very eager last year. Bear in mind that I was running for the Treasurer position. The Five Factor Model of Personalities, or “The Big Five”, was something that I could easily relate to with this process. To stand out among the competition, I had to exhibit extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness. Painting a positive image, I had to show my personality by being:

Extroversion
- Enthusiastic
- Bold
- Energetic
Agreeableness
- Kind
- Cooperative
Conscientiousness
- Organized
- Efficient
- Systematic
Neuroticism
- Relaxed
- Calm
- Emotionally Stable
Openness
- Intelligent
- Creative
- Imaginitive

Without having these traits, there was no way I could have been elective by my fellow peers into the position. Because we were the council for the residence hall, we were to represent the people of that hall and listen to their concerns, while also putting on special programs for the residents. So, for this process of actually being put into the group, I had to fit in with these characteristics as a representation of my group personality. This model can also be seen even when making friends. No one is a careless, sloppy, disorganized, temperamental, and unsociable person (even if they may seem like it); which leads me to believe that everyone can exhibit these traits.

Even on the campaign trail, I can remember exhibiting social anxiety, which is also mentioned in Chapter 4. I can remember during the debate night, I had not packed the proper clothes for the event, so I showed up in a tee and shorts, while my competitors were dressed in fully fashioned suits and dresses. I guess I didn’t get the memo. I became very embarrassed very quickly, so I just did what I do best: I was myself. I didn’t try to paint a false image or representation of myself, and I told the audience that I was NOT going to do that to them either. This is when I believed that I was going to win, and I did–so I guess it isn’t all that bad showing up in improper dress attire.

As for the biggest determinant for me running for and accepting the nomination into the council was just because I wanted to get involved and wanted to gain more leadership experience as a freshman. Even if our group dynamic was off and we did really get along much, we still succeeded in the overall mission: to properly represent the residents of Patton Hall by listening to their concerns and taking action. Because of this journey I partook in last year, I believe that I am much more equipped to serve as not just a leader for others, but for personal growth and development as well.

This is a picture of our first bulletin board that we created. (PS: I’m on the O in “Council”!)

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Colin Luck

Archives: September 2016

Reflection Journal #5

Reflection Journal #4