Friday, October 2, 2009

It's time to check your progress and momentum

Welcome to Week Five. Ladies and Gentlemen, it's the end of the honeymoon.

This is typically the week when everyone's academic reality comes crashing down after a brutal set of exams. The freshmen start missing home and those boyfriends and girlfriends they left there. The student activities folks are exhausted from the last month and a half of constant work.

Maybe, if you're lucky, you have Homecoming or some other fall festival weekend to ease the pain, but the weather is turning colder, sunset is coming earlier, and all that beautiful "start of the year momentum" has waned.

By now, you have a pretty good idea how your football team is doing, and the majority of you realize that your record is going to be pretty much like last year's. You'll probably notice people starting to blow off the games this weekend or next.

I don't mean to be depressing, but dear student leaders, now is when you need to start cranking up the motivation machine. You've coasted as far as the start of the year will take you, and now you should be getting some real work done. Your group should be knee deep in projects, events and the routines of achieving your mission.

Check in with your fellow officers. See how they are doing – or if they are actually DOING anything. It's a good time to gather opinions, check back on those goals you set at your retreat. Have plans been finalized? Have some first steps been taken? Any early successes we can celebrate? Any leaders not stepping up?

It's a good time to have that executive board meeting around a few plates of sliders at the local Denny's. Leave the agenda behind and just talk. What can we realistically accomplish in the next two months before we elect new officers? What's working, and what isn't?

Name three things that your members can be looking forward to. If you can't think of three obvious things, do something about it.