Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Blog #1
Hello everyone! My name is Jackie Kitchen and I am a junior from Colorado Springs, CO. I am a very outgoing person and love meeting new people. I am currently on the Ohio State University Women's Club Soccer Team, which I joined last winter. It has been great meeting new girls who try out each season and has enhanced my college experience tremendously. I am currently working towards a double major in Accounting and Finance at the Fisher College of Business, which I enjoy very much because I really like math and numbers. In the business world, you are surrounded by people and are expected to be able to work in teams to complete various tasks. For instance, auditors work in teams at the client site every single day to prepare and finalize the audit for the client. While thinking about scheduling classes, I felt that Team and Organizational Leadership would be a very interesting class and would be extremely beneficial to take while I am preparing for my future in the business world. Last summer, I interned at PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP), a Big 4 Public Accounting firm here in downtown Columbus. I constantly worked with other interns to complete projects and tasks, which was an amazing experience. However, I believe I learned more from myself in summers past, where I worked at a 5 Star Resort in Colorado Springs, namely The Broadmoor. For 4 consecutive summers, I worked as a waitress at the outdoor pool serving poolside guests food and beverages of all sorts. The Broadmoor hires employees from around the world, so I was able to work with people from England, South Africa, Latvia, Hungary, and Jamaica. Since I returned to the pool each year, I was one of the more experienced servers and was fortunate enough to train many of these foreign servers, and many from the states as well. Not only did I learn a lot about the cultures of different people from all over the world, but I learned a lot about myself through leadership positions. I am quite an outgoing and energetic person, and realized that this made me approachable for those who were in need of help. I tried to set an example for those who I was training by working diligently but having a continuous smile while talking to coworkers and guests. After being approached for help many times, I began to realize that my coworkers would learn better when I coached them through a task, allowing them to go through the steps themselves rather than simply showing them what to do. This took a lot of patience to sit down to help them through each task, especially if the pool was busy, but I believe this patience and understanding helped them grasp each task more quickly. After my final summer at The Broadmoor in 2014, I learned that the key to leadership is being understanding, approachable, and hardworking because people look up to you and rely on you for their own success.
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I am very glad you were able to experience those things that were not necessarily apart of your every day life. I think that being introduced to different perspectives and cultures can contribute to your growth. You are also able to become flexible in understanding the many ways of leadership there really is. I think your leaderships skill require you to step out of your comfort zone so that others are comfortable which is a sacrifice many leaders make.You seem like a really great leader!!
ReplyDeleteJackie, your summer's at The Broadmooer sound like they gave you a great experience with managing other people. I'm really interested to hear more about how the experience helped you grow and the new skills you have because of it and how you saw yourself grow.
ReplyDeleteHey Jackie! I loved hearing that you play soccer here! Would love to talk to you more about that. The Broadmoor experience sounds incredible and close to home. It is such a key event to see that helping people starts with them being able to work through it themselves and that is such good quality in a leader. Your experience and patience with co-workers is a life lesson that you will take far.
ReplyDeleteI think it's great you gained a great sense of culture through your experience, which is something many people (including myself) lack today! Gaining perspective on other cultures is one of the greatest experiences you can have and it's very beneficial throughout life.
ReplyDeleteP.S. don't look at my blog... I openly admitted to not liking soccer. Hopefully we can still be friends, haha.
Jackie, I think your work experience over the summer sounds awesome, as well as the fact you are apart of the club soccer team. Being involved with sports my whole life one thing that I greatly miss from high school is the competitive atmosphere of a sporting event and bonding with teammates. I'm sure the club team has helped you achieve both of these. Lastly, I think it is very cool that you are from Colorado because I happen to be a huge Denver Broncos fan. Peyton Manning has been my favorite player ever since I've been watching football and I love watching him play each Sunday. Let's hope they can bring home the Lombardi Trophy two weeks from now!
ReplyDeleteI think it's really cool that you are on the Club Soccer team! Soccer is a great sport. It's also sweet that got to learn new interactions with many foreign people. I am sure you learn a lot new things about their culture and gained great experiences from it. I also work at a restaurant as a host and have to train with foreign people also and train them. You can manage to learn a lot patients when you're working with people from different culture, which is a great leadership quality.
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