After two years of focusing on your weaknesses for improvement, and pushing your strengths to the limit, it was time to see how far I had grown. If I compared the growth of my abilities and skills before entering the IA and now, the growth was quite minimum before than it has been in the last two years. But, even though growth has also been apparent in only 5 months this semester, I’ve always believed I have space for improvement. And now, after a semester filled with autonomy and opportunity to show your potential, I realized that taking initiative was still one of my weaknesses.
Asking where you can help out or volunteering for something is not the complete definition of initiative. For me, initiative is realizing there's a problem on your own and trying to solve it. Initiative is coming up with new ideas to improve our business and keep growing.
This semester, as we started BlendZ and went through many pivots, I became the Director of Social Responsibility, which entailed to find somewhere to donate the money generated from BlendZ. The role seemed easy at the beginning, but it was clearly not. One of my biggest learnings this semester has been to have a balance between excitement and being skeptical about my ideas and decisions we make as a team. Throughout the entire semester we’ve had endless ideas for our
This semester, as we started BlendZ and went through many pivots, I became the Director of Social Responsibility, which entailed to find somewhere to donate the money generated from BlendZ. The role seemed easy at the beginning, but it was clearly not. One of my biggest learnings this semester has been to have a balance between excitement and being skeptical about my ideas and decisions we make as a team. Throughout the entire semester we’ve had endless ideas for our
social responsibility, but at one point we were stumped as to what to finalize it with. And because of this, many times we compromised with the ideas we had. I was eager to finish my task and so once I got excited with something I wanted to pursue it no matter what. Nevertheless, many times, those ideas weren’t feasible. |
For a long period of time during BlendZ, I was stuck with this portion of the company, which is why most of my feedback was lacking initiative. There was little improvement seen from the social responsibility throughout the semseter, and I truly wish I had taken more time to be more creative with this.
Part of taking initiative—not only in a business but in life—is getting out of my comfort zone, which sometimes means to take on harder jobs. I’ve considered myself a risk-taker in many situations, but in this case, I played it easy. This semester I didn’t feel like I pushed myself to do things that I had never done before—I was stagnant for a big chunk of the semester and even the little growth that there seemed to be was not enough, at least for me. But, on the other hand, I came out of my shell when I began to be more present in class discussion; I began |
to be more present in class discussions; I began to have a voice and involvement in class, something my peers and I agreed on fully now that the semester is coming to an end.
This semester, I have accomplished two major goals: make my voice be heard and reading. I became more comfortable and more confident in myself during class discussions. And in terms of reading, I finally managed to 1) find a book I REALLY enjoyed and 2) actually managing to finish it. It’s true, there is ALWAYS time to read, you just need to find it—and the only way to do so is finding a book you find interesting and pleasurable.
This semester, I have accomplished two major goals: make my voice be heard and reading. I became more comfortable and more confident in myself during class discussions. And in terms of reading, I finally managed to 1) find a book I REALLY enjoyed and 2) actually managing to finish it. It’s true, there is ALWAYS time to read, you just need to find it—and the only way to do so is finding a book you find interesting and pleasurable.