Category: Mentorship Journal

This is the final week of my Human Resources in Sport course, so I have been tending to that for the first part of the week before coming back to a review of the Life After the Games course. I am not just taking the training perse, I am also proofreading for any errors in the content and writing them all down on a sheet of paper that I will then submit at once to Dr. Tiell. Just some very minute typos are all I see, nothing incredibly major. I have made it through the first six units of Life After the Games, and it is holding my attention pretty nicely. The activities are very relevant to the content in the course and really do help you to realize your value.

With three more units to review, I had every intention of going back to look some more at it after the ninety-minute vice presidential debate that aired on television this evening. I decided to watch and managed to get caught up in everything that Vice President Pence and Senator Harris discussed in the course of the evening. My plan is to be done with the initial review by the end of this week anyway, so there is still some time with that. Just like with the election I suppose, these last few weeks of my mentorship are going to be crucial for many reasons, which I will get into as we continue. Just know that Life After the Games is well on its way.

After taking yesterday off to focus on work for my other course, I had availability this Friday evening to continue going over Life After the Games. The ICC has requested that I document how much time it takes me to complete this course. So far, I am at four hours 15 minutes, broken up over two days of course. I have to break up long projects as much as possible, just so that I can keep my mind fresh. Otherwise, I will start to zone out. If I do this right, it should take me a while to get through the whole thing from start to finish.

I should be careful about what I share regarding the project because ultimately we want people to utilize it to their benefit. On the other hand, it does not hurt to share these experiences as they can generate interest in Life After the Games. There is a section that asks the student to prepare a budget. Basically, you go into the course and download a spreadsheet where you then put in how much you anticipate spending in a given time period. This can take a little time if you think about your expenses and, as I did, go back to look at bank statements. You want to be thorough, but if you go into too much detail, it will take a lot longer. It is a fun exercise though because it allows you to see how much you are paying for items like Dairy Queen or Disney+ and whether you should spend less.

Today is my birthday. I am, well, I’ll just go ahead and tell you that this the final year of my thirties. Time just continues to march on. With that–and the new month, we had our weekly Zoom meeting to check on the progress of the Life After the Games course. Dr. Tiell sent a couple of documents my way to share in the meeting. Again, I am the acting facilitator of these calls, so documents come to me for sharing once we are in the room. It is very similar to what I do at my job. One of the documents is a description of the honorary chair for the program itself, it basically outlines what obligations the titleholder has regarding the promotion of the program.

The second document is a letter going to the head of the Athlete’s Commission for a certain governing body. It outlines the benefits of Life After the Games and how the organization can get involved. Grant funding provided by the IOC may be able to assist in the costs of training (B. Tiell, personal communication, Oct. 1, 2020). We really are moving along with this project now. Attending the meeting was really the extent of my work today. I am in the closing stages of my Human Resources in Sports course and the final project is due this week, so most of my attention has gone into finishing that. I will have a little more time to devote to the ICC after the class is over.

I have a soft spot in my heart for guinea pigs. I had one for a pet when I was in my teens. Her name was Pepper and tragically, she passed while I was on a class trip to Washington, D.C. Not really a good ending, but what I am about to tell you next is a little happier: I mention guinea pigs at the top because I have been chosen to be one for the Life After the Games course. This means that I review the class, including the accompanying playbook, and then share my thoughts about the content and whether the playbook activities correspond with it. This is also a chance for me to understand a little more about myself as a professional.

I made it through the first two sections of the course, which are probably the most interesting because they allow you to assess your current and ideal state. One of the activities involves taking the Briggs Myers personality test, which you may have heard of. You basically answer whether you agree or disagree with a certain statement. After answering the questions, sixty-four in all, the test indicated I am an ENFJ, or Extravert/Intuitive/Feeling/Judging. I find the result to be quite odd because I do not consider myself to be an extravert by any stretch of the imagination. I am certainly a writer, though, and I have another test–the Holland Career Aptitude–to prove it. Writer came up as the number-one occupation for me in that activity. It is always fun to explore yourself through assessments.

“This works. Brochure ready.”

Those words came from Josh at 9:05 last Friday morning, meaning the brochure promoting the Life After the Games program is finished, at least for now. We are moving ahead on some other plans as well, once those come to fruition, more changes will need to be made. These additional development were the focus of our Thursday meeting. As a group, we went over the marketing points that were intended for last week’s meeting, as well as the next steps now that the document is ready. The ICC can approach its contact about serving as an honorary chairperson. I feel that I cannot tell you who that is until those plans have been finalized but I can say that things are suddenly starting to move at a very fast pace.

One week from today will be the beginning of October, which puts me all the closer to when I am to finish this mentorship and ultimately my MBA. The thought is very exciting but also a little frightening. I am not quite to 100 hours yet and I need 200, so I am not halfway home. Which means I need to step it into high gear. Some events could not be helped. I essentially lost a week last month because the derecho storm knocked out power and the Internet. Generally, however, I feel I could have planned a lot better by seeking out more opportunities. As I have learned over time, it ultimately does no use to dwell on the past. I must now figure out how to tackle what is in front of me instead.

I met very briefly with Liston via Zoom today. We had a bunch of things that we were to discuss from the previous meeting such as marketing. Dr. Tiell even gave me items to share on the screen, as she would not be present due to another commitment. Alas, the call did not go as planned. Liston was driving his car in between functions, so he would not have been able to see the documents. Our meeting lasted just a few minutes, but he did say he would look over the documents when he had availability. He also told me that he is in communication with the person we want to serve as our spokesperson, the brochure just needs to be done once and for all.

Josh had one final edit to share with me, or at least he said this would be the last edit. The ICC logo needs to be nudged just a little bit. I went in and made that modification and sent it over to Josh about an hour ago. It really is amazing how much the brochure has changed over a few weeks, some of the elements remained from when I started but the look is very much different. And for the better, I might add. A lot of the credit goes to Josh for pushing these edits. He has an impeccable sense for detail and it shows in the product, a document that the ICC will be proud to share with interested parties to tout Life After the Games.

We are getting closer and closer to being finished with the Life After the Games brochure that Liston wants to present to a potential spokesperson. Josh sent a couple more edits yesterday morning, minor things like reducing the font size in a couple of places and adjusting the placement of the ICC logo within the ring. It did not take long to make those edits and send back to Josh. I have also been asked to go into Google Forms to develop a survey for the end of the Life After the Games course. Some of the information was pre-filled, so it did not take long at all to alter the questions where they would fit our needs. There are standard questions about what people like and dislike about the course.

Other questions deal with the ease of registering for the course and going through the material. A majority of the questions are on the Likert scale, where you choose the degree to which you agree with a certain statement. The last section requests brief feedback on the experience. From a student’s point of view, I am not that great about completing surveys unless I feel really strongly about the experience, and I emphasize the “really” part here. Looking at the other side of the coin, I understand where the instructor wants to know if people like the course and what about it needs to change, if anything. Reviews are ultimately how the word gets out about a product and if the word is good, then more people will use it.

Today was the weekly ICC virtual meeting with me, Liston, Dr. Tiell, Josh, and our collaborator Ron Lonzo, who heads up marketing at Tiffin University. If you think about movies, television programs, or recorded music, there is usually a producer and then a distributor. Life After the Games is a fairly similar concept–the ICC is the producer of the course in this instance, while Tiffin acts as the distributor. It is a good setup and nice to have Ron on board to help us get closer to launching the product. Today served as mostly a brainstorming meeting to come up with potential target markets for Life After the Games. Obviously, since we are dealing with sports here, it would make the most sense to look at sports organizations. We have a list going of groups to take a serious look at.

We are also very close to finalizing the Life After the Games brochure, Josh and I are just going over some details through e-mail before we present to the group. I have submitted my latest draft to Josh ahead of tonight’s NFL kickoff. As a twenty-seven year fan of the Kansas City Chiefs, it still feels surreal to be calling them the defending Super Bowl champions, but I digress. Just a lot going on in general right now, but I think as far as the brochure is concerned, Josh and I are in a very good spot. With that, I think I am going to catch the game now, anticipating that Josh will send further feedback later.

It is Labor Day weekend, the unofficial last weekend of the summer, also the last Sunday without NFL football for five months, we think. After spending several hours the last couple of nights on brochure edits, I am taking it fairly easy today. Josh did send a couple more recommendations my way this morning, which were not nearly as complicated as the text color change. I am taking a little time to review what we call the playbook for Life After the Games. To give you an idea of what that is, there are sections in the course that will call for the student to stop and perform an activity, not so much a game but quizzes that will help him or her determine what they value most in their lives.

Much like a playbook in sports, this document is meant to help the athlete plan for future success. This is where we engage them in the course. All of the activities will come together and help them understand what their strengths are and how to use those to their advantage when pursuing a new path. I have not performed any of the exercises myself, but they fit very well with the purpose of the training, that take-home piece if you will that allows the user to demonstrate that they have gone through the work of completing the training. I like this product better and better as time goes on, and I am not just saying that because I am involved in its development.

I keep talking about the Life After the Games brochure and that is because we continue to work on it. Josh and I spent this Saturday afternoon e-mailing back and forth about further changes to the brochure. We have a section with two interlocking rings–one has the ICC logo and the other Tiffin University to highlight the partnership between the two entities on this project. We just had the ICC logo without the International Cultural Consortium wordmark below it in one ring. Josh thought we should add the wordmark, so I grabbed the image I had and placed it in the software I am using. When I sent it back for his review, he wanted to see about turning the text in the wordmark red just like the rings (J. Henson, personal communication, Sept. 5, 2020).

I think I might have said before that Canva is a very nice software for designing brochures but when it comes to photo editing, it leaves a lot to be desired. This request desired a more professional product than what Canva offers. So I put $100 down on Adobe Photoshop Elements just so I could change the text color to red. It was worth every penny and quite honestly, I will probably use it again for other design work I may do. In other words, I will not charge the ICC for purchasing the software and just keep the license for myself. Any edits remaining will be very minor ones, that is how close we are to the finish line on this brochure.