Saturday, May 19, 2007

My New Job

After all of the excitement of graduation, Noche de la Familia, and my vacation to Puerto Rico I had to deal with process of starting my new job. Two short days after graduation I started my new job as a program coordinator for a low-cost/no-cost community based health outreach program for children. I am happy to report that I survived the first week unscathed. I will not sugar coat my first day on the job experience. I had the foresight…thanks to my grant writing and program design professor at SC, to read the contract that our program has with the County, so thankfully on the first day I already had an understanding of the program. However, nothing could have prepared me for my first staff meeting at 9:00 a.m. only an hour after I started my new job. Immediately when I was told at 8:45 a.m. about my first staff meeting I began thinking about what my leadership style is and how I can best convey that in my initial meeting with my new staff. Then I suddenly became ever grateful to the school of social work for making me take my Leadership class, and of course I perused my Organizational Behavior material to refresh my memory. Our first staff meeting went really well. The only odd thing was that I had two people ask me for days off on my very first day and I felt so odd “granting” their days off. I have also had to sign for three raises in the past week as I had to approve the raises. There has been an immediate shift in my role from student to supervisor, but by Tuesday I started feeling more comfortable with my role as a leader. Overall, I felt prepared for the entire weeklong experience. I have had to review past contracts, future contracts, I have had to accompany my staff to their community-based outreach events, I have had to grant days off, approve salary increases, while simultaneously planning for the establishment of the infrastructure of our new program. There have been numerous challenges this week, but to be completely honest I feel that I was prepared. Also, my present supervisor was my former field instructor and we have built a strong working relationship so I trust that she would not allow me to flounder. A combination of preparation and support allowed me to successfully complete my first week of work as a macro-level practitioner.

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