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.
