First Days of Training

    Monday was the first day of training for the ERS Internship, and boy, it was intense. There are fourteen BYU students and one elderly couple. We will be going throughout the world to Budapest, Hungary; the Czech Republic; La Paz, Bolivia; Chile; Brazil; and Austria.
    Our training has consisted of learning the history of the Church Welfare System, discussing the doctrinal foundation for the career workshop program, and actually participating in the Career Workshop. The following are some of my thoughts and notes from the past two days.

Day One
    Spent half the day discussing the history and background of the Career Workshop and Welfare program of the Church. This can mostly be summed up in the oft-told story with the moral, "Give a man a fish and feed him for a day; Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime." We avoid just giving money, food, supplies, etc. to the people who are needy. This creates a dependance and even an expectance of receiving help. Our purpose is to help the people to become self reliant so that when we go away, they can continue to prosper.

Coat of Arms Activity
    The Career Workshop begins with filling out a Coat of Arms that represents who you are. (You can download a copy of it here.) Participants fill out each of six cells with information about themselves. For me, the most difficult were the five positive words that describe you, three accomplishments, and your educational achievements. I especially have had difficulty thinking of the latter.
    I suppose that, in some ways, this workshop is similar to a visit to the psychiatrist or a support group. It requires a lot of self introspection and you are constantly outside of your comfort zone. You must put yourself (and your innermost feelings, values, and goals) out in the open.

Skills List
    The achievements listed on the Coat of Arms are then used to discover the skills that you have, which are later applied to your career goals. This also was very difficult for me. As a self-effacing, self-critical, seldomly-satisfied person, I find it very hard to accept that I have skills that are valuable and which can allow me to accomplish other great things.
    After a great deal of pondering, I've come through the following thought process. Many people are reluctant to convey their own skills because of society's disapproval of boasting and the like, but in reality what we are asking the participants to do is to truthfully express their abilities. I don't feel that this was what made it tough for me. I actually don't believe that the skills I have are valuable and/or applicable to other areas because I have very few specific examples of how I have employed those skills.
    When we try to show that these skills are applicable to other activities, I am doubtful because I have rarely done so. I easily discredit it because I can think of many other accomplishments which would utilize that same skill that I have not yet done. This leads me to the realization that what I need to do to believe is to try new things that would require a skill that I have. By succeeding in other areas I will prove to myself that these things are true.

Day Two
    Because of a lack of time I will briefly explain that today we modeled a few more activities from the workshop and then were given the chance to teach them ourselves. This again was very challenging because we were required to get up in front of the other interns and trainers and teach them something that they are very familiar with. I was hesitant and reluctant to do it at first, but by the end of the day I was frustrated because I only got to practice once. After the initial attempt, receiving feedback, and being able to go over it in my mind I had many ideas that I thought would be good to try. Unfortunately I was not able to test them out because we ran out of time.
    I look forward to practicing again even though it makes me so uncomfortable.

Here are some pictures from today: