On Wednesday, I hosted a kickoff meeting for a mentoring program I planned with the Society of Women Engineers at TU. I was incredibly excited and nervous about the hour-long meeting, since it was the first event/meeting I would be taking charge of. Planning the event started back in September, where I had meetings with other SWE members to discuss how I saw the program unfold in the coming months.
I had to:
- Decide on a date, time, and a location
- Create a survey of all of the potential mentors and mentees
- Make a listserv of all mentors and mentees
- Match up each mentee with someone who would help them succeed in the college
- Create a presentation of the rules and expectations I decided for this semester’s program
- Keep in touch with all paired mentors and mentees and give reminders.
The majority of the list had to be finalized within the week of the kickoff meeting, which was during the week of my midterms. I was able to pull everything together into a finalized plan/meeting a few days before, and was satisfied with my preparations.
Of course things went wrong during the meeting.
The room I had booked weeks in advance had actually been unavailable, as I found out when the professor walked in with his class. (With the help of other board members, I guided everyone to an unoccupied room and quickly set up the powerpoint and materials. )
Then I realized that some participants had not notified me that they could not make the meeting. (I had to re-pair up some people on the spot for the activities I had planned.)
But the most unexpected change in my plans had come from an attendee who interrupted the presentation and complained about the problems she had had with the previous board members. I felt completely caught off guard and upset at how she was interrupting everyone’s time to talk about an unrelated matter. Since I was representing Temple’s SWE, however, I could not react as I normally would have. I listened to a couple minutes of her heated monologue, then curtly told her that we would arrange another time to discuss the issue.
I had forgotten that such unexpected events teach me to quickly resolve problems. Learning to take things in a stride has now become a skill that I value greatly.
What are some situations where you had to manage unexpected interruptions, or change your plans? How did it turn out in the end? Feel free to let me know in the comments!
