Top Ten List
The top 10 skills for 2020 will be:
Two skills that I am confident in my ability to do is emotional intelligence and coordinating with others. I feel like I am very much a people person and do very well leading and working in groups. I believe that the best leadership comes from understanding the different peoples point of views and where they come from. Diversity often makes the best, most creative and productive groups, but if you don’t have the ability to appreciate and welcome everyone’s different experiences, point of views, and feelings it is all for not. I am also very good at making sure everybody is on the same page and uniting people. I am part of the leadership committee at my schools Harry Potter Club, where I have been tasked with forming relationships and making the members look like a family, so I have had to use these skills all the time in different situations.
Probably the two places that I need to improve on is negotiation and creativity. Since I am very in tune with emotions (like I described in the last paragraph) I find it very hard to negotiate because I find myself caring about how other people feel about my actions instead of getting the job done. I love coming to a good compromise where everyone can win, but sometimes I fear I can be a bit of a push over and allow others to get there way at my own expense. I plan to work on this by continuing to put myself in places where I have to negotiate so that I can get better at it. My other struggle is with creativity. I have been working on this in Innovations throughout the course of this year, being able to forget the box exists, let alone try to think outside of it. I used to consider myself creative, but things changed when I got to high school. It has been a work in progress gaining some of that back since the first day of this class and I have made great strides, but I do think that it will always be something to work on even when and if I get to a phase where I am confident in it. I will continue to learn the things I have learned in this class, from problem solving to design thinking to try and chip away at the mental barriers I have been taught to put on myself.
- Complex problem solving
- Critical thinking
- Creativity
- People management
- Coordinating with others
- Emotional intelligence
- Judgment and decision-making
- Service orientation
- Negotiation
- Cognitive flexibility
Two skills that I am confident in my ability to do is emotional intelligence and coordinating with others. I feel like I am very much a people person and do very well leading and working in groups. I believe that the best leadership comes from understanding the different peoples point of views and where they come from. Diversity often makes the best, most creative and productive groups, but if you don’t have the ability to appreciate and welcome everyone’s different experiences, point of views, and feelings it is all for not. I am also very good at making sure everybody is on the same page and uniting people. I am part of the leadership committee at my schools Harry Potter Club, where I have been tasked with forming relationships and making the members look like a family, so I have had to use these skills all the time in different situations.
Probably the two places that I need to improve on is negotiation and creativity. Since I am very in tune with emotions (like I described in the last paragraph) I find it very hard to negotiate because I find myself caring about how other people feel about my actions instead of getting the job done. I love coming to a good compromise where everyone can win, but sometimes I fear I can be a bit of a push over and allow others to get there way at my own expense. I plan to work on this by continuing to put myself in places where I have to negotiate so that I can get better at it. My other struggle is with creativity. I have been working on this in Innovations throughout the course of this year, being able to forget the box exists, let alone try to think outside of it. I used to consider myself creative, but things changed when I got to high school. It has been a work in progress gaining some of that back since the first day of this class and I have made great strides, but I do think that it will always be something to work on even when and if I get to a phase where I am confident in it. I will continue to learn the things I have learned in this class, from problem solving to design thinking to try and chip away at the mental barriers I have been taught to put on myself.
Passions
The one thing I would change about the Innovations program, the thing that lead me to making this website and doing these projects, is that not enough people even know what it is. During a homeroom type period we were commissioned to go to classes and promote it for students scheduling their classes for the coming year, but alas, headphones exist. It was difficult to get the students attention about this class and make them understand what we do because it is a very abstract class. When I was being recruited for the class by Ms. Habig she made it sound like this was the class I was meant to be taking and that it would end up changing my life, but sadly our presentations did not pack the same punch. So, I have chosen to make my passion project for the time being to spread the word about this class. I am going to start by creating commercials that will air on the student news so I can bring the sage words of our instructors to everyone. I am also considering going to the counselors and trying to get them more informed on what it is and hype it up to students.
Nickel Plate Arts Community Partner
I am currently working for Nickel Plate Arts, a local arts center in Noblesville Indiana, where they have open houses, art showcases, and activity nights. They are in need of more volunteers because they cannot afford to hire more hands. It is my job, along with a group of other students, to help them find more volunteers and keep them involved. I was drawn to this challenge because I think the arts are very important and I wanted to be able to help them keep like program going.
We had an initial meeting with the head of the arts center where we gave all of our initial ideas of how to go about solving their problem. After the meeting once we have narrowed down the list of ideas we can pursue and were told to focus on high school students in the area. Our three main ideas were to get these opportunities on the student news, have it be sponsored by the National Honors Society (a volunteer organization ran through schools), and throw an open house for high school art teachers to bridge the gap and make a connection through the community and the school. My main task was getting in contact with the National Honors Society, which was honestly so simple and only took one e-mail. so then I focused on helping making the volunteer experience better. I did research and made a checklist for what to do to make new helpers feel needed and valued and came up with the idea for monthly volunteer get together, to build a community within them. By the end we all helped put together the party because it turned out to be the most challenging task.
My main take away from this is the importance of community and focusing on getting people together to help a cause that many people care about.
We had an initial meeting with the head of the arts center where we gave all of our initial ideas of how to go about solving their problem. After the meeting once we have narrowed down the list of ideas we can pursue and were told to focus on high school students in the area. Our three main ideas were to get these opportunities on the student news, have it be sponsored by the National Honors Society (a volunteer organization ran through schools), and throw an open house for high school art teachers to bridge the gap and make a connection through the community and the school. My main task was getting in contact with the National Honors Society, which was honestly so simple and only took one e-mail. so then I focused on helping making the volunteer experience better. I did research and made a checklist for what to do to make new helpers feel needed and valued and came up with the idea for monthly volunteer get together, to build a community within them. By the end we all helped put together the party because it turned out to be the most challenging task.
My main take away from this is the importance of community and focusing on getting people together to help a cause that many people care about.