I learned a lot from this experience. One of the biggest things that I learned was, that I am extremely lucky to be able to do what I can do. I am also extremely lucky that I have had this opportunity to help people who truly need my help. At first, going back to the basics was super hard. However, once I started helping the people it came easy. For example, on the second day that we were there, I had a woman named Kristen. This day was super cool for me because she already knew how to ski but by the end of my day, the instructor told me that this was the best that he had ever seen her ski and he said that this was because I was there giving her pointers and pushing her to do a lot better. This was a huge compliment to me because I connected with Kristen on a personal level and I was so happy that I could help her become a better skier. The lesson that I learned from this was that sometimes not saying a lot to a more intermediate student can be the best because a lot of the time they can just look at what you are doing and then follow. The lesson that I will take into my school work is to make sure that I am being patient with the teachers and my peers. This was a major part of working with adaptive sports because each day I didn’t know what type of student I would have but I just had to stay patient and positive no matter who I had. I feel that this will help me be a lot more productive in my work.
There are a lot of things that I have learned in school to help with Adaptive Sports. The main thing that helped me was my work ethic. I feel that since I have gone to Animas my work ethic and the work that I have produced have gotten a lot better. This helped with adaptive sports because I could problem solve by using my work ethics from school. For example, on the third day, the girl that I was with Evilyn was having a hard time with her first couple runs. While we were going up the magic carpet I thought about what she had just done and how she could fix it. By the time we got to the top, I made sure that I told her and my instructor what I was thinking about and the next run she did ten times better. After I reflected on that moment I realized that I had taken the problem-solving skill that I have used in math and I had brought them into the real world in order to solve bigger problems. A big skill that I further developed in volunteering for Adaptive Sports was my patients. A huge part of working with adaptive sports is making sure that you are patient with your students in order to make sure that they are happy. This was very hard at times because we were working with students with disabilities. However, by the third day, I felt that I had gained more patients with all of the instructors and the students. This will help me in school because, in order for me to get a lot of work done, I need to make sure that I am in a good headspace. I often have problems with my peers, but if I am more patient with them then I will overall have a lot better days and get more work done.
Time management played a very important role in working with Adaptive Sports. The reason for this is because I wanted to make sure that I got some free skiing time while still being there for my instructor all of the time. The way that I did this is that I made sure that I communicated with my instructor in making sure that I knew what time I needed to be back. On the first day, I had a very short lunch so I didn’t get to take any personal ski runs. However, after I finished on the first day I met up with all of my classmates and we did some runs before we all went back and cleaned up and left. The most difficult thing about managing my time was that it was different every day. The reason that is was different was because it depended on the student I had and how long the lesson was. So in order to make it less difficult I made sure that I communicated with my instructor as much as possible. I kinda noticed that if I hadn't had a break in a little while I could see my mood dropping. However, I am used to this because of my current job so every time that my mood went down I made sure that I did everything in my power to bring my mood up.
I felt that my YouScience results were not that accurate. However, my results did say that I had people and communication skills. I think that what I did for my sophomore inspire week has to do with both of those things. For example, I had to make sure that I was comfortable with meeting new people and communicating with them. I think that I could not have done this if I didn’t have those skills. I also noticed that all of the other sophomores that I was with had all of these same skills. I feel that this is the reason that we all did so well and had such great things said about us.
I think that the biggest piece of advice that I would give the incoming sophomores is to make sure that you choose an option that you are interested in. I think that the reason that is when I chose to volunteer at adaptive sports I did a lot better because I love to ski and I love to help people and I also really enjoy helping people with disabilities, and adaptive sports put all of those things together.
