Introductions seem the best place to start...

My name is Alexis. I am one of five people selected to participate in the Leadership Academy this year, three of whom are here at Arabian. So: If our schedulers haven’t taken out a collection for a hit man because we have made scheduling that Wednesday we go to Leadership Academy each month as impossible as possible; one of our team should be posting to this blog about our experiences after each session. Theoretically. Why? We, as a team, wanted to share our experiences with you. Why? Because there is always next year…. Hopefully this will help you make the decision to apply for leadership academy yourself, or not.
So starting at the beginning again (which is always a good place to start): I am Alexis. I am a recent promotion. I went from being a page to a 30hr PT Library Assistant in YS here at Arabian. A month into the new job (loving the new job, BTW) the opportunity for Leadership Academy presented itself. Before I saw the email I was encouraged to look into it by my supervisor and senior coordinator. I still haven’t mastered that skill where you’re able to tell, when your boss says something, if it is a suggestion or if it is not a suggestion, so I started the application. My feelings on the matter are probably best described as “cautious” at this point. If you know me, you know how rare “caution” is for me. I am more of a leaper. As it progressed further I was even more intimidated because the other two people who applied from Arabian were my former boss and my current boss. It’s a competitive process. Can you see the many ways that could have not ended well for me? Even lacking in political skills as I am--I saw many ways this wouldn’t end well. I thought about all those possibilities in great detail and frequency waiting for the interview, but once you apply…un-applying isn’t really an option. What kind of message would that send management? “I only want to do this if it’s easy, and requires no discomfort on my part.” Besides, one of the things I was really looking forward to about being in Leadership Academy was getting training and feedback on how to handle situations just like this. I started the application under direction; I finished it on my own. Because even that step, filling out the application and looking at the interview questions made me really think about what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. Here’s another little tidbit about me: I get verbal diarrhea and word vomit either because I am nervous, or too impatient to think it through before leaping (did I mention I am a leaper?), or because I lack the awareness to realize what’s really going on around me. Like separating the cars from the traffic before you get downed by a Buick. I know there is traffic, it’s noisy, and people are lined up at the crosswalk. Either I don’t see the signal, or I don’t wait for the signal, or I am crossing the right way and still fail to notice the truck that ran the light. Did anyone get that license plate? In Leadership Academy they call it cluelessness. We talked about it in our orientation. Apparently I’m not as strange as I thought. Leadership Academy…my road to self actualization and awareness; stay tuned to see how it works.