Another Voyage

So my life is set up into different chunks of time and focus.  While I was traveling, this blog was about travel.  While in grad school, I focused on it (but I have not caught up with all that I want to say so more to come).  Now that I am a leader or boss of a small organization (I prefer leader), this blog may get a bit theoretical as I attempt to learn how to become a good leader rather than devolve into a horrible one.  This will take active practice and work and I am already staring at six book on leadership from the library taunting me from my kitchen table.  The topic?  LEADERSHIP.  This may mean I lose a few of my eleven or so readers but hey, I write for myself and the process as much as for you (but I really like you a lot so please stay!).

While attempting to finish the thesis that will never end, I read the following quote from an article about economic or extrinsic rewards in business, versus social or intrinsic rewards in business.  Essentially, should organizations create elaborate reward programs to light a fire underneath their employees butts to encourage them to share their knowledge (which apparently people don't do naturally, as we hoard knowledge, much like the show...I wonder if my brian on the inside looks like some of those living rooms...).  Well, as it turns out, people are more apt to share knowledge if they are able to identify intrinsic reasons to do so:

"Employees who think knowledge sharing would increase the scope and depth of associations among organizational members tend to have a positive attitude toward knowledge sharing.  Their positive attitudes toward knowledge sharing are formed by the expectations of reciprocation on knowledge sharing.  Moreover, employees who believe in their ability to contribute to improvements of organizational performance have a positive attitude toward knowledge sharing. Therefore, we should pay more attention to enhancing the positive mood state for social associations which precedes knowledge sharing behaviours and should provide useful feedback to improve the individual's self-efficacy instead of designing an elaborate evaluation and incentive system."
- Bock. G. W., & Kim, Y-G. (2002). Breaking the Myths of Rewards: An exploratory study of attitudes about knowledge sharing. In Information Resources Management Journal, 15(2), 14-21.

Self-efficacy in this study is defined as "people's judgments of their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performances", a definition which was stole borrowed from Bandura (1996).

Essentially what this says is that my decision to provide an employee this week, who has been invited to participant in...let's say...'turf management', was a good choice.  This may foster a greater desire to contribute to our small but impressive organization, because he will have developed social associations that will motivate him to contribute for intrinsic reasons, which always last longer than extrinsic motivations.  This is why when I was at that crazy school and the administration pretended to listen to the teachers' ideas but really didn't, they did not get feedback when they asked us questions during staff meetings because we had no intrinsic reasons to share our knowledge with them, the leaders of a school, as we knew our organization would not improve without a change in management.  Sharing would have been a waste of our marvellous contributions.  This makes sense now.

I hope 'turf management' does not make anyone lazy.  :)  

Crunch Time 2

Update on how thesis is going.
Well.  Quite well.
Then I had a colleague that came to the grad student office sick.
Sick people should stay home.
Then I got sick.  For a whole week.
I stayed home.  Still recovering.
Still managed to get some work done in front of my computer.  Productivity down however.
Will persevere.

A few years ago a good friend introduced me to this blog:

Crazy Aunt Purl

She is a hilarious blogger who is living a different sort of life than she had planned.  I read her blog in early January and she had decided not to make any New Year's resolutions.  Instead she was creating monthly goals that she wanted to try to achieve.  Well, some were daily, some weekly, and some monthly.  Purl even made herself a beautiful (and tacky in a fun way) Kindergarten version of a star chart on a piece of large clipboard paper.  Turns out it worked for her and she remembered her goals all month, plus she now has an almost fully decorated chart full of shiny, red, happy stars.

I am in.
I made my list.
I made it twice.
Here it is:

Daily Goals:

1.) 1 hour of exercise

2.) 5 servings of veg & fruit 

(called 5 A Day in the UK; picked this up while traveling)

3.) 3-4 hours of work on thesis

4.) to bed before 11 PM

Weekly Goals:

6.) 1 shopping/grocery trip

7.) 2 healthy dishes made

8.) do 1 large cleaning job

9.) 1 fun night out planned 

One of my awesome sisters (I have a few) made family calendars and every day I write down the number of the goals I achieved in the day's respective calendar box.  

You might wonder about the simplicity of some of these goals.  I am in grad school and basic self cleaning, eating and care takes a back seat to many other projects.  You've been there.  You know what it's like to wonder if you neeeeeed to shower one day, or if you haaaave to buy healthy food this week, because it takes time and that time could be used on one of those projects.  You've been there.  This is to keep me clean, healthy, happier, and keep my energy hustle level up to get my thesis done.  February went well.  Very well.  March has slowed down because I am sick.  Once I am over this, I am back.  Full force.  

If this is your thing, give it a try and let me know how it goes.

Thank you Purl!

Nutty Professor

This week has been strange.  Many things occurred but in all I am concerned I will never, ever, ever get a job.  Ever.  Let alone one I enjoy.  I expressed my concerns to a full-time instructor from my university, when I saw her at a conference, and she gave me some advice:

"Tonia, quit trying to look into the future and do what you need to do now.  Focus on finishing your thesis.  Become the typical nutty professor who has documents, papers, and pens all around, writing, reading, sleeping and writing more.  Give into this time period and really experience it for the next few months, then worry about the rest of it later.  Be in the moment, this moment."  

Tough advice for someone who is always looking into the future, who has student debt, and is anxious about the next few steps of life.  The more I think about her words, the more they are sinking in.  Listen to the people that have come before you and do what they say.  They know more than I and this is actually advice I have heard from several people on campus.  So I let go.  I focus.  I trust in those who know more than I, immersing myself in this experience.  The only way to enjoy the road and the destination.

What will that destination be?  Dang, still looking forward.  Need to go back to writing but I will be updating my Nutty Professor posts once in a while.  Bring on not showering for four days, wearing the same clothes day in day out, and ordering in food keeping my brain and body in top processing shape (maybe a little cooking would be better for the last one).

Nutty professor.  Here I come.  In costume?!?

How to Make $$$ During the Holidays

A few weeks ago on Facebook....

Summer 2012: Pirate Invasion!

This is my sister-in-law Cheri.

These are the types of cakes Cheri dreams up and creates.

A pirate ship arriving from a water land of cupcakes to a desert land of 'sand' cupcakes on which the pirates will fight with the skeleton crew who have a treasure.  Yep.  She makes the fabulous creations and then we, her grateful family-in-law, have the audacity to eat them.  Truly they should be encased on glass and put on display in a museum.  Instead, we eat them.  We (un)grateful lot.

The pirate ship is made from rice-crispie treats wrapped in moulded tootsie roll.  The masts are cookies.  

The water and sand are cupcakes with delicious icing and candies on them.  The desert has icing which is them dipped on pulverized graham crackers.  So yummy!

In addition to the cake she made cross-bone cookies...because they are so simple to create (?).

The skeletons guarding their treasure

'Come get us and our treasure pirates!'

The pirates descend in a ship to advance towards the booty.

Prepared to fight!

Who will win?!?

This summer I confessed to Cheri that I have a fantastic business idea.  She is going to make cakes like these and I am going to sell them.  Thusly she and my brother must stay together always, and she needs to make cakes faster...or we can hire minions to create the cakes while she dreams them up.  Either way my plan will take some convincing and she just laughed every time I mentioned our new joint venture.  There is some work and convincing yet to be done.  Wish us luck with our booty!

Summer 2012: Mermaid Camp

As some of you may know, I have 12 (going on 13) nieces and nephews.  They are a constant source of entertainment, joy and hilarity for their aunts and uncles.  One of my sisters, Marcia, was talking with her two boys at the beginning of this summer about camps they may want to join.  Their younger sister, a three year old, was listening in and piped up, "I want to go to Mermaid Camp".  Uh?  My sister did not know what to do as she had never heard of such a thing.  Upon telling us the story, we family members joked that we could tie the kids legs together and throw them in Shuswap Lake, in amongst other sassy comments.

As we gathered at Shuswap for a family gathering, Marcia decided she was going to give her daughter a Mermaid Camp.  She went to the dollar store to make a few purchased, we gathered our make-up, nail polish and other assorted elements that could be included in our first ever, Mermaid Camp.

Marcia gathered the nieces and made fin-like invitations to distribute to the family.  We were all invited to Mermaid Camp at 2:30 PM on the porch.  Be prepared to be done up!

The adults began to put make-up on the girls, paint nails, coif hair and have an all round good time.  Sadly I could not find any ocean, sear or Little Mermaid music for the event but as you can see, we were having a great time.

Audra, the little girl who started Mermaid Camp,
having her nails done by Aunt Lurene.
(One of the best pics I took.)

Not aware her hair is on end.

Strike a pose!

We kept decorating each other.  Laughing at the feather eyelashes, the sparkled rings, and the fun colours of make-up.

Audra, in the rapture of Mermaid Camp

Our neighbour, Autumn, came to join us. 

Finishing touches

A late-comer just getting started.

Three little mermaids from school are we....

...even the adults got into it...

Well hello Cheri!

Adult nail time, care of Sabrina

Funny thing happened on the way to Mermaid Camp, the nephews showed up.  With trepidation, at first, they began putting on rings....

....then they let the Aunts start doing their hair.....they did not realize that this was only the beginning....

Stunning smile

With a lovely red flower 

With lovely red lips

....next came those crazy feather eyelashes....

Then the Aunts went wild with a no-holds-bar approach to Mermaid Camp.  Anyone on the deck was either getting done-up, was doing the work of decorating another person, taking pictures (like moi), or posing for a picture. 

Work is kids!

Work it Andrew!
(One of the best pictures from Mermaid Camp.)

....then Ozzy Osbourne Mermaid Camp started....

Group shots were next on the list of things to do at Mermaid Camp.

Love the smiles and other assorted facial expressions.

Pose it children!

Then it was treat time: banana vanilla ice cream milk shakes in fancy glasses.  

Thank you to all who made the delish milkshakes!

We had a great time and it was really fun seeing my nieces and nephews participate in some gender bending and enjoying every minute of it.  I was even more impressed by my siblings who just watched it happen, provided the space for their girls and boys enjoy doing something new for fun, for family bonding and for a great time.  

This may become a tradition.

A decorated child

Phew!  Mermaid Camp is exhausting!