Dawg Daze LeaderAt the beginning of my junior year, I had an awesome opportunity to volunteer as a Dawg Daze Leader to help welcome new students. As part of the program, Dawg Daze Leaders also receive training including a wide range of workshops and team building activities to help build community, increase understanding of campus in general as well as other useful information for first-year students. Dawg Daze if very much about team work, but it also allows each upperclassman to share his/her personal experience with new students, and I love how I can help others to not make the same mistakes I did or provide them with things I wished I knew in my freshman year.
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Leadership Competencies GainedFacilitation
UW is a undeniably welcoming community, but its big size is often too overwhelming for new students. As an upperclassman who have gone through ups and downs in my freshman year, I understand how it felt exciting but also intimidating at first and I want new students to have a good impression of UW and truly embrace every single moment they have in freshman year. By sharing my own stories and resources available for them, I have given them a foothold as they start off a whole new chapter in life and be able to make the most out of their time in college. One of the most rewarding moment I have ever received is when I saw a student in the group I led one year after Dawg Daze and he said thanks to me sharing tips about not waiting until later in college to start doing stuffs outside of school such as research, internship, etc, he has gotten into a lab that he really likes. It is the moment that makes me feel I have done my job, to facilitate the difficult transition to college. Flexibility Dawg Daze includes over 200 events in the course of 10 days with various time and location. With that packed schedule, it is unavoidable that we run into problems, sometime we would end up with too few or too many people at once, or there are changes to original schedule that were not clear etc. In such situation, I would try to jump in and help if my schedule permits. That is also what team work is about, to be able to cover for others and to know that there is always someone to back you up when needed. Responding to ambiguity There were times when we Dawg Daze Leaders need to make decision without clear instructions,and I think it is a part of life. Not everything in life is transparent, and we need to learn to accept ambiguity and turn it into our advantages. When there is no right or wrong answers, sometimes the best we can do I to follow our head and heart, and it turn out even better than we expected. |