As an Individual Working

As an individual working with the LTI Outreach senior project group I’d say my performance was good, but it could have been a lot better. It was rewarding knowing that a program I’ve loved all throughout high school would still be around after I graduate because of me, but at the same time that didn’t make me passionate enough to put my all into it. In the beginning I wasn’t thrilled about the nature of my project because although I had a personal connection with it, It wasn’t exciting for me at all. I think a lot of me joining the LTI outreach team was having a group chosen before the project, and us not being able to decide on something to please everyone. Out of fear of working alone, I stayed with the group and we decided on this out of pressure from the program manager. It definitely was not my first choice, but I was happy to help.

Towards the beginning of our planning days we wasted a lot of time talking about unrelated subjects and goofing around. It didn’t hit us until about two weeks before our first scheduled school visit that we were responsible for the entire project and presenting it professionally. A lot of times we put important things off for a later date and allowed ourselves to spend time helping other groups and socializing. Eventually we prepared to visit the schools and for a while I felt like I had no contribution. My first real task of the project was to make a brochure for the students we would be presenting to. Prior to that I hadn’t done much to help, which made me even less enthused about the project. Once we got fliers brochures and applications together, we had our first school visits. The first few presentations weren’t up to my group members and I, and we sat back and watched our mentor present for us. I appreciated the help but at the same time I felt it was unfair to take our project from us and make it so there was even less for us to look forward to. As time went on we eventually got to take the stage for our presentation and I felt even though I often let stage fright and the spot light get the best of my nerves I did a good job at over all communicating our message through our presentation. My mentor however would always try to force me to express more emotion and “feeling” as I presented. We came to a disagreement on the effect the amount of energy I displayed would have on the kids we presented to. I felt the way I was presenting was fine, but she thought my lack of over the top enthusiasm would discourage the kids from joining. I didn’t want to bore them, but I felt like being too artificially enthused and trying to evoke fake emotion would be annoying to the kids and cause me to lose their attention.

Fortunately, my agent of change project in 10th grade for my FOL class prepared me for some aspects of this project. For