Letter of Intent

I am very happy to announce that I have finalized my letter of intent for my grad school application! *** Happy dancing all around my cube *** And to my credit, I had some co-workers read it, and it's not all BS and sounds genuine.

I officially have everything I need to mail it off - which I will do by the end of the week. Now I just have to cross my fingers, eyes, and toes and hope I get selected into the program!

I should be working on my 1 hour course for my client, but I can't seem to focus on it today. Where I'm getting hung up is in selecting an activity to reinforce the learning. I originally had two hours to present, but I sliced an hour to give to their HR director to present on the corrective action process. I helped her design her hour, giving her 3 activities to do to really nail the point home, but I'm not having as much luck with mine.

I'm still using the "One Minute Manager" concepts for this session on coaching and feedback. But, they are not open to me assigning them the book, as they are already reading "Good to Great." The book explains it so much better than I can, as it's written in a narrative, telling a parable of a young manager trying to discover the secrets of being a great leader. The concepts this time are the "one minute praise" and the "one minute reprimand." It's basically helping them get into the habit of giving feedback when it's needed, and not waiting for performance review time - or letting issues pile up which causes an explosion when the final straw hits the camel's back.

The other teaching tool is a document that explains the different type of coaching and when to use the different types. Normally I would go with role-playing in any sort of form when teaching about feedback, but the 3 activities they will be doing later in the hour are all role-playing related! Oh well, something will come to me.

On a happier note - tomorrow is my birthday! Yay! I think I'm going to take a friend's advice and live up my last year in my 20s. He was funny in suggesting after my break-up that I need to get out there and: get drunk, sleep around, find a rebound guy, drink, party with friends, break up with the rebound guy, sleep around, drink, find another rebound guy, drink some more, sleep around some more, break up with the rebound guy, have a threesome, drink some more.... I don't know if I can fit all of that into one year.... lol! We'll see how crazy and wild it will get.