Author: Matthew Perkins

To recap what my signature project was, me and four others created a group and came up with the idea to host a clothing swap with refreshments and called it a “Sip ‘N’ Swap.” There were several hurdles to jump over and roadblocks in our way, but every time we were presented with a problem, we came up with a solution where our group could succeed. I could not be happier with the results from it. 

After more than a month of planning, our group was finally able to host our event on November 18^th. This was a very stressful day for everybody, but we crushed it. Our event took place in the HUB Hage Room and lasted from 3-6 PM. The group got there early, and we started laying out our clothes and the clothes that people brought us ahead of time. Fast forward after everyone came and went, we started to clean up the rest of the clothes and came to the conclusion that we should donate them to ladders. Everyone agreed, and we packed them up into two different cars. 

We thought bringing them to ladders might raise a challenge, but it was so easy. Everything came together and the only thing that was left was our showcase event that we signed up for. A few hurdles were jumped over to consider it a success. The snowstorm on the day prior threw us off a little, but it was nothing we couldn’t shake. We showed up with our props, talked to any people who came up to us, and then left in a timely manner.  

I am going to talk about one specific habit of mind that I feel was worked on exceptionally this semester, and that is purposeful communication. Starting with speed dating in the beginning, I had to step a little out of my comfort zone, but that was more than necessary. Moving forward, trying to come up with a plan where everyone feels heard and respected was easy but nonetheless, it requires good communication skills. Creating relationships with outside parties was a big part of the battle. Ultimately, this led me to joining the SSF club, so I would consider the partnership a huge success.  

To wrap up my thoughts on my signature project, I could not be happier with all the different results. Joining a new club, working on specific skills that will make me a better candidate for my future job, and helping give back to the community here in Plymouth. I will forever remember this project and the sheer happiness that comes with it. 

After hosting a very successful event, I have learned and developed several skills that directly apply to my future career. As someone who wants to become a high school social studies teacher, I am going to need a diverse skill set to bring to the table that sets me apart from others. I will be discussing the specific skills that I was able to work on and the habits of mind that were subconsciously being improved. 

The first skill I will be talking about is event management. Is this my first time hosting an event on campus? Actually, it is not. I helped host the National History Day (NHD) competition for the state of New Hampshire last April through an internship with my advisor. I oversaw registration and did several other tasks to aid my advisor in running the event. Despite having this experience, I still think it is so important to take a step back and get multiple perspectives from your peers when discussing how the event will run. Ironically, I did the same thing at the Sip ‘N’ Swap that I did at NHD, except it was much less stressful. Teachers help host events and volunteer all the time at their schools, and this is something that I cannot wait to do to give back to the community that I teach in. 

With all that being said, the habit of mind self-regulated learning directly applies to it. We were the ones in charge of everything, not our instructor. We made sure to have zero loose ends, not someone else. Reaching out to the Student Support Foundation was all on us. Thankfully, I have several ties to SSF and was able to create that partnership without problems, but it was still on us. Self-regulated learning goes hand in hand with project management, and I am more than happy that I was able to develop this skill and habit of mind even more. 

Another skill that I was able to work on was creating professional relationships to help promote our event. This would fall under the purposeful communication habit of mind and gave me and my group great practice for collaborating with other parties when it comes to events or anything else. Asking SSF to help us was easy, but they also wanted to benefit from the event too. So, our solution was to also collect canned goods for the PSU food pantry and to my surprise, they received a decent amount of donations. Coming to a compromise where both parties benefit from each other is a great example of how purposeful communication was used during our project.  

To conclude my thoughts, so many different skills have improved, and the ones mentioned are just the surface level. The outcome of our project brought us all great satisfaction not only because of the larger turnout than expected, but also because of the skills we all worked on together and improved at. 

Hosting an event without any form of preparation or research is a recipe for disaster. Our event, the Sip ‘N’ Swap, is no exception to this idea. Over the course of the semester, we have seen how other people hosted clothing swaps to see what would be considered “optimal” for our guests. We are taking this information and applying it to our spin where refreshments will be served and our little raffle.  

To start simply, we realized really quickly how much information needs to be on a poster to properly advertise an event. Event management is not something new to me, but an event like this sure is. We had to cover questions like when, where, and other “rules” of the event on a typical piece of paper. All the while trying to make it visually appealing. Making sure we hit all the check boxes on the poster was half the battle. Now that everything was decided, we did a little digging into how to organize the clothes but came to the realization quickly that we had no idea what clothes to expect. 

Doing background research really made our project much better. Another important factor was the amount of time we had to get all of it done. We were never in a scramble prior to the event, and those are the two main reasons why. Being able to do our research, plan with plenty of time, and communicate with each other consistently made this project have potential to succeed. 

With communication being brought up, this ties directly into the habits of mind. Being able to purposefully communicate with each other has made our project flourish. We quickly made a group chat with the five of us and socialized to get to know each other better. I only knew one of my group mates going into the project, and was the only boy, but I was able to get comfortable very easily.  

To recap this reflection, I am very thankful for the instructions given by our instructor. Prior to being told that we should do research, I would’ve opted to not do it in all honesty. I had no idea how important it would be in the end and have learned a good lesson from it. Always, and I mean always, do your research. 

After having a good amount of time to really organize our thoughts, my group and I have made a lot of progress. We were a little unsure of what to do at first due to what other groups were doing in the class, but with some critical thinking and problem solving, we were able to come up with our own original ideas. We are planning a “Sip ‘n’ Swap” where people will bring their gently used clothes and trade them with other people. Refreshments will also be served, hence the “sip” part of the title.  

Over the course of the early planning phase, we hit a few struggles. One of the first hiccups was creating a QR code for our poster that was going to advertise our event. We came across some information that said the QR code would expire, and it created a problem for us. We needed it for people to RSVP for the chance to win a gift card to Cafe Monte Alto. There were a couple of options that we came up with to solve the problem of raffling off the gift cards. Ultimately, we decided to have a sign in sheet at the door where people wrote down their names and phone numbers in a notebook for us to keep track of our entries. 

A week or so into the project planning, we decided to reach out to the Student Support Foundation (SSF) on campus to see if they would be interested in co-hosting an event together. When it was brought up at a routine meeting, the SSF crew were all on board for it. This helped solve a couple of problems that were presented that I won’t go into detail about right now but helped us a lot. Due to SSF being so flexible, we came to an agreement where people could bring either clothes to the swap, or canned goods for the PSU food pantry, so they could benefit too. 

Part of the planning process that helped us was creating a timeline to keep us in check. When only meeting twice a week, it can be very easy to fly through certain tasks and leave others untouched. We had several different people reach out to PSU employees and groups to help share our message, and this brought up the struggle of not hearing back from certain people.  

Overall, planning has been a successful mission from our group. We have been able to work together with exceptional chemistry to do a good thing for everyone on campus. I am more than happy to have participated with them and done everything I could to contribute. 

In my time at Plymouth State University, I have come to the realization of the importance of the habits of mind. Metacognitive thinking can really change the approaches to challenges in daily life, not just in education. I practice the habits of mind (Problem solving, purposeful communication, integrative perspective, and self-regulated learning) every day, whether I am aware of it or not. Step by step, I am getting better and climbing instead of being at basecamp. 

I find myself practicing problem solving a little more than the other habits of mind because of how much it appears in my daily life. Many of my favorite past times include problem solving, like golf for instance. I have been playing golf since I was sixteen and have always found the challenge to be exciting. When thinking through a shot on the golf course, I first must determine what club I am going to hit based off how far I need to hit it and where I am on the course. There are so many different problems to solve when approaching a shot and my problem-solving skills really help me. 

Purposeful communication is another habit that I work on day in and day out. It would be kind of hard to not work on this because of the interactions I have throughout my days. Whether I am conversing with classmates or talking in a professional manner towards my professors, I find myself confident when it comes to communicating. Could I still use work on it? Absolutely.  

Integrative perspective definitely can give me problems at times, but for the most part, I feel like I do well with it. I find myself being able to put myself in other people’s shoes without much problem and ultimately, be an understanding individual. This skill is going to help me when I am teaching because grades do matter, but at the end of the day, so do every other aspect of students’ lives. 

Self-regulated learning is the habit I struggle with the most by far. It is challenging at times to truly want to get schoolwork done or other tasks that you really do not have interest in. I am working on this though and want to work on my discipline. 

Reflecting on my current development on the habits of mind leaves me with thinking about being more disciplined more than anything, along with working on the three other habits of mind.