Problem Solving
Definition: a thinker who focuses on the problem as stated and tries to synthesize information and knowledge to achieve a solution.
Criteria: organized, positive, driven, critical-thinking, and patient
Example:
Recruitment Week. Otherwise known to others as hell week. Well, only if you are involved in the FLO world, or the freshmen leadership organization world. If you are not, let me try and explain how it works to you. Recruitment week is the week after Gig Em’ Week of the fall semester. It is during this week that you work your butt off to promote your flo to the potential freshmen members on campus. This is the most intense and competitive week of the year for all of the flo’s. You either work hard and recruit the best, or you are lazy and suffer the consequences.
There are fifteen flo’s at Texas A&M University. Most of the flo’s are open to anyone, but some of them, like PREP, are major-specific flo’s. The fact that PREP is the business flo makes our selections even harder, but this past fall, PREP staff was up for the challenge. Now all of this may sound silly coming from a sophomore, but the reason I am always so excited to talk about PREP is because I had such an incredible time as a freshman. That’s what I want for every member of PREP. That is the mindset that I had going into recruitment week.
Before recruitment week, there was much to be done. We had to plan out the recruitment theme, get all of the supplies, make sure we knew all of the rules from FLAC (the organization in charge of flo’s), and just make sure we were pumped and ready to go. These things did not happen easily. It is hard to get sixteen people on the same page working toward the same goal. There were of course complications with the flyers and with the shirts and with the banners, but we did not let that stop us. We gathered all of our excitement and energy and put it toward figuring out our problems and fixing them.
On the first day of recruitment, things seemed to be running smoothly. We were all very excited, dressed up in our “American” themed costumes, prancing around trying to convince freshmen to apply. The problems did come though. We realized that the banners did not stay up as easily as we would had hoped, so someone on staff came up with the idea to use concrete blocks to hold them up. Problem solved: check. The next issue came with location time sign ups. People on staff started not staying at their location times for the full time slot. We then quickly realized this was because we had not taken into account walking/travelling time to classes. If you had a class at Wehner at 11:10, you could not stay at the banner by Academic Plaza until 11. So what we decided to do what change up the banner-holding times according to schedules and passing periods. Problem solved: Check. The last issue we had was certain people on staff not volunteering to hold banners because they had “other things to do.” This was unacceptable because during recruitment week, you were supposed to be at a banner if you were not in class from 8 am-5 pm. No excuses. This was frustrating because everyone was sacrificing sleep, food, and free time, but this was what we signed up for. We all wanted the best for PREP 2016, so we had to give up a lot of our time and give everything we had to make it happen. This problem was solved when Upper Staff (the junior co-chairs and directors above us) sat us all down and made sure our priorities were straight.
All of these problems were unavoidable, but mendable. We worked as a team to figure out the problems and rationally solve them. This took sacrifice and humbling, but we made it happen and I know we all learned a lot. Personally, this taught me that problems are inevitable, but always fixable. A lot of my time during this specific week mentioned was spent as a member of the team. The specific problems that we had were problems that we all had to help fix, so as a member of the team I did my best to do that. I made sure that I was 100% committed to whatever job I was given and helpful of others in their specific jobs. I may not have always been the one with the exact solution, but my positive and helpful attitude did definitely help solve the problems that came up that week.
Definition: a thinker who focuses on the problem as stated and tries to synthesize information and knowledge to achieve a solution.
Criteria: organized, positive, driven, critical-thinking, and patient
Example:
Recruitment Week. Otherwise known to others as hell week. Well, only if you are involved in the FLO world, or the freshmen leadership organization world. If you are not, let me try and explain how it works to you. Recruitment week is the week after Gig Em’ Week of the fall semester. It is during this week that you work your butt off to promote your flo to the potential freshmen members on campus. This is the most intense and competitive week of the year for all of the flo’s. You either work hard and recruit the best, or you are lazy and suffer the consequences.
There are fifteen flo’s at Texas A&M University. Most of the flo’s are open to anyone, but some of them, like PREP, are major-specific flo’s. The fact that PREP is the business flo makes our selections even harder, but this past fall, PREP staff was up for the challenge. Now all of this may sound silly coming from a sophomore, but the reason I am always so excited to talk about PREP is because I had such an incredible time as a freshman. That’s what I want for every member of PREP. That is the mindset that I had going into recruitment week.
Before recruitment week, there was much to be done. We had to plan out the recruitment theme, get all of the supplies, make sure we knew all of the rules from FLAC (the organization in charge of flo’s), and just make sure we were pumped and ready to go. These things did not happen easily. It is hard to get sixteen people on the same page working toward the same goal. There were of course complications with the flyers and with the shirts and with the banners, but we did not let that stop us. We gathered all of our excitement and energy and put it toward figuring out our problems and fixing them.
On the first day of recruitment, things seemed to be running smoothly. We were all very excited, dressed up in our “American” themed costumes, prancing around trying to convince freshmen to apply. The problems did come though. We realized that the banners did not stay up as easily as we would had hoped, so someone on staff came up with the idea to use concrete blocks to hold them up. Problem solved: check. The next issue came with location time sign ups. People on staff started not staying at their location times for the full time slot. We then quickly realized this was because we had not taken into account walking/travelling time to classes. If you had a class at Wehner at 11:10, you could not stay at the banner by Academic Plaza until 11. So what we decided to do what change up the banner-holding times according to schedules and passing periods. Problem solved: Check. The last issue we had was certain people on staff not volunteering to hold banners because they had “other things to do.” This was unacceptable because during recruitment week, you were supposed to be at a banner if you were not in class from 8 am-5 pm. No excuses. This was frustrating because everyone was sacrificing sleep, food, and free time, but this was what we signed up for. We all wanted the best for PREP 2016, so we had to give up a lot of our time and give everything we had to make it happen. This problem was solved when Upper Staff (the junior co-chairs and directors above us) sat us all down and made sure our priorities were straight.
All of these problems were unavoidable, but mendable. We worked as a team to figure out the problems and rationally solve them. This took sacrifice and humbling, but we made it happen and I know we all learned a lot. Personally, this taught me that problems are inevitable, but always fixable. A lot of my time during this specific week mentioned was spent as a member of the team. The specific problems that we had were problems that we all had to help fix, so as a member of the team I did my best to do that. I made sure that I was 100% committed to whatever job I was given and helpful of others in their specific jobs. I may not have always been the one with the exact solution, but my positive and helpful attitude did definitely help solve the problems that came up that week.