By Erik Squire

(AKA Mind-Blown Seminar)

Just before the start of the semester CeSIL hosted a student leadership boot camp that was open to all (you might remember Shane Long shamelessly putting in a plug for it whenever he talked last semester). It was most definitely a worthwhile experience, and this is coming from someone who only went for the food!

The Resident Advisors (RA) had to attend the event as part of their RA training. For the rest of the students, we were there because we wanted to be. The whole experience was educational, inspiring, and somewhat of a work out. We received free T-shirts, free food and the event was (you guessed it) free. The event’s amazing guest speaker was Joe Urbankski, from Collegiate Empowerment. We also had Director of Residence Life and Student Involvement, Shane Long, teaching for part of the seminar.

The event kicked off with Motivational Joe (as I like to call him), showing us a blood pumping video that definitely had a naked man in it. Joe talked proudly about his baldness saying that he came into this world bald, and all these years later he’s still bald. Then we had to stand up and introduce ourselves; there were two very good looking people from Machias, might I add. The whole event Joe had us on our toes, intermittently jumping to our feet and giving each other high-fives, chanting, and having group discussions. The catchphrase of the day was “oh yeah,” people who heard us probably thought there was a cool aid convention. Also during the event, at every philosophical discovery, people made the “mind-blown” motion with their hands.

Joe discussed with us the importance of being specific with our goals; he said if we didn’t get specific then somebody else who did would achieve our goals. He also told us about setting 4yr goals, and that important things happen in 4yr terms. At one point Joe gave us all a form to fill out. We had to state our age, then the age we thought we would die (I said 110yrs). We had to think of where we’d be at the end of our lives, physically, spiritually, mentally, and how accomplished we’d be. Joe then asked us, “If you have all these good things going for you that you just listed, would you really die?” We had to say no, because people that are happy live longer. He then told us to list how old we’d really be when we died, and what we would do with that extra time.

All the boot camp participants took a break for a “networking lunch,” and then the students who were not RAs met with Shane for his presentation on recruiting. Shane offered some useful information about creating an elevator speech (a speech about one’s organization that had to be said in the time it took an elevator to arrive at its destination). He also told us about running effective meetings, that were fun, productive, and to the point. He also gave us some acronym that I can’t remember… Sorry Shane.

When all the boot camp goers met back in the main building, Joe began his second session. He began this session with a group dance; thank you to the brave souls who got up front. Joe helped us work through some of our insecurities as leaders in our organizations. He had us talk about the follies of perfectionism (no worries here Joe!). He then told us about singling in on our 3 most important goals, as well as the “7 attempts” approach to achieving our ambitions.

He capped off the day with having one of us students give a recap of the event, only, the person doing so would have to present it as “Joe.” The guy who we nominated to do the recap pulled it off with flying colors, right down to the jumping up on the counter and shaving his hair off (at least in spirit). He left us all with something to think about when he chanted “you have potential, you have potential, and you have potential,” pointing to his nose as it grew mimicking the Geico commercial with Pinocchio.