A few weeks ago, Tom, Nathalia, and I embarked on our day long Q4 retreat to plan our projects for the quarter, learn more about each other, and of course, have loads of fun.
This particular retreat was a little different in one way: there was no one new. Nathalia is continuing her internship from last quarter, and Tom and I have obviously been here a while now. This meant we didn’t need to spend too much time refreshing on the company structure, and it meant there was no new team dynamic to figure out. We were able to dig deeper into each other’s stories and feelings because the basis of friendship was already there. We did a lot of activities around values, what we value most in terms of the company and in terms of our lives. It was an awesome, challenging, and insightful morning.
After a relaxing lunch in Chinatown, filled with a lot of silliness and mind-blowing facts (did you know cashews actually are part of the cashew fruit?), we headed back to the office to get crackin’ on the exciting projects we will focus on this quarter. To name a few, Free Hugs Day, huge updates to the Student Affairs Collective and the Student Leader Collective, and much more.
Our process is always the same when choosing projects: write ALL of our ideas from our brainstorming bucket up on the board, choose a theme for the quarter, pick out projects that fit the theme. Bam!
After all of this, Tom gave Nathalia and I the biggest surprise of all: Matilda on Broadway. Neither Nat nor myself have ever been to a Broadway show before, so we both were emotional at sharing this first together. The show was AMAZING and Tom’s lovely wife, the Annie Colbert of Mashable, joined us too!
So what did I learn this retreat? 1. We are all very silly people. (Read: awesome.) 2. Everyone at this company has similar values, which is important for a team. 3. My job is the coolest job ever. (But I knew that already.) 4. We are doing big things.
