After unpacking and unwinding from our flights, we went to dinner with some of the staff at a local restaurant called "The Rusty Bucket" - it was a neat spot and we all indulged ourselves with their tasty fried pickles!
We jumped right into training on Tuesday morning. Not without making a shower schedule the night before (we are so weird and alike and would make a schedule for something so simple). The coffee was flowing, as well as the pump-up music on CDC Kerry's iPod. We began training with some introductions on how to maneuver through important DG websites that we will be using this year. We also had another tour of Executive Offices and the Martin Center. Executive Offices is such a lovely place and it is so cool to be here in person. I especially love the archives room where you can see items that belonged to our founders. We even have an old door that was once at the Lewis School for Girls (our founding school) - AWESOME, huh?
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I think probably the best thing about this experience so far is seeing how quickly and naturally the CDCs have clicked and are bonding. I feel like I have known these women forever and could tell them anything. We are so much alike, for instance with the reasons we are all here, yet we each have our own fun and quirky sides we bring to the team. We learned even more about each other after today's Myers-Brigg Training. We each took the same test prior to training, answering questions that asked how we deal with certain situations we encounter in life. Our personality type was generated from those answers. I learned that my personality type is ENFJ. What does this mean? E = extroverted, N = intuition, F = feeling, J = judging. So what does this say about my personality and who I am?
"Warm, empathetic, responsive, and responsible. Highly attuned to the emotions, needs, and motivations of others. Find potential in everyone, want to help others fulfill their potential. May act as catalysts for individual and group growth. Loyal, responsive to praise and criticism. Sociable, facilitate others in a group, and provide inspiring leadership."
It was so interesting to discover all of this and see how some of these things are spot on with how I see myself. We were taught how we respond to stress and how we learn best given our personality types. Our group has both extroverts and introverts but we all share the "J" in common. We discussed the importance of being aware of our personality types in our time as CDCs and how these traits will impact our experience. Being able to pinpoint my strengths and weaknesses, resulting from my personality, will help me understand my emotions and actions throughout this process. I know that I connect well with others and quickly recognize their potential yet I also can lean too much on my emotions and have a hard time relying on my own confidence without the approval of others. I'm thankful for this new understanding and appreciation of why I am the way I am and the tips I was given on how to embrace these things. The training helped to remind me that I am unique and need to learn to be less self critical.
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We also did some great team-building and icebreaker activities in recent training that were so much fun for the group. We got our netbooks and were surprised with the cutest cases that have our names embroidered on them. We've been working hard and will jump into Foundation training tomorrow with DG's Foundation team.
adorable, huh?
So what have we been doing in our spare time?
Being silly, getting to know one another, taking pictures, making our very own CDC twitter (follow us, DeltaGammaCDCs), calling and skyping family and friends back home, eating and eating some more, watching terrible tv (like "Toddlers and Tiaras" and "Teen Mom"), exploring the area some, walks and runs at night when the humidity subsides some, trying to replicate each other's accents, and talking about how excited we are for expansion at Bama and our upcoming travels.
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Tonight, I will go to bed feeling calm and at peace. I'm so happy here. All of the women around me are phenomenal. The staff we are working with are incredible and clearly love DG. Also, I have an awesome boss and all of the CDCs already see her as our mama here. It is a blessing to connect with women that share the same hopes and visions for an organization that means so much to each of us. I am thankful to have 10 amazing young women beside me in this journey and cannot wait to see how our relationships continue to grow and prosper. I'm so very grateful for this opportunity and know I will be a changed woman, for the better, at the end of this experience.
SNEAK PEAK: My first visit following my week in Tuscaloosa will be...
