KIN 3143

Honestly I went into these presentations expecting to be bored and hear a lot of the same things. But I was presently surprised. There was a lot of diversity in what people did. It was interesting to see what kind of fields kinesiology students are planning on going into. I especially enjoyed hearing about people who shadowed coaches as that is one of my areas of interest. Occasionally I feel like I do a lot of work coaching a 9th grade baseball team. But I am just on the ground floor of coaching work. It is time consuming and unless you make it big time it probably does not compensate fairly with the time required. Some people really went all out and committed more time than the minimum 8 hours and that probably is a good measuring stick to how much they enjoy their prospective career (although class schedule probably played a part with that too).

The presentations were diverse, informative, interesting, and in some cases funny. People were creative in how they put their experience together and many in the class asked good questions. The whole experience was beneficial to me both in my own project and in learning about other people's projects

Throughout all of the presentations I learned a lot about the many different careers and jobs in sports. For example, I never knew how much work actually went into being a football coach at a division I university. I knew that the head coach would obviously be a very stressful job but I never imagined that some of the position coaches and coordinators often work up to 20 hour days during the season. I was very surprised to learn that information and all of the sacrifice that goes into their jobs. As a quarterbacks coach I would think that during the season you may have 10 to 12 hour days but I never imagined that someone would work multiple 20 hour days. Football especially seems to be the sport in which the coaches and players commit the most time. It was also very interesting to learn about how many of the coaches got the jobs they currently hold. The presentation today the 25th about a sport coordinator in Australia was incredibly interesting. i have always wondered what the high school dynamics and sports life are in other countries. Australia from what I heard seems to be very similar to the United States in that they offer a large variety of sports for everyone to participate. Their structure also seemed very similar to us here in the states with each state of Australia broken up into regions and then those regions have their high schools and teams. I think that the variety of different job shadows and presentations gave me a good insight into many of the jobs and fields that I may have never considered or known much about. This project as a whole was a great experience for me and in my own experience reassured me of what I want to do after graduation. These presentations were very interesting and something that was definitely beneficial I think to everyone in the class.

I think the coolest thing that I witnessed while watching all the professional development presentations was how much passion everyone had about their project. I liked how big of a variety of professions were covered. It's interesting hearing what everyone wants to do with their lives. One thing that was mentioned in most of the presentations was the importance of networking. I believe this to be true in any career, not just in those pertaining to athletics. As a prospective teacher, it is important for me to network among teachers and parents and administration.

The presentations have all been informative and interesting. The flexibility of the project allowed everyone to do something that they enjoy and are more than likely looking to do in the future.
Many people were very informative and the information shared was interesting and learned a lot about the various careers that people within the class were looking to get into. getting an indepth looks behind the scenes of these jobs was the neat part.
For the marketing part of Gopher sports, the networking and extensive communication further exceeded what I would have expected. For training, while being on the football field it was interesting to hear about the injuries that they deal with on a daily bases and the life of a highschool coach and teacher was a project that i could completely relate to. Being that I am going to school to become a physical education teacher and coach I would love to some day be in the same position as that teacher.

The presentations that have taken place over the last three class periods have shown the range of interests people within our class have for future careers. One thing that stood out that I also noticed in my own job shadowing experience was the amount of communication involved in many careers. A lot of people spoke about the constant flow of emails and phone messages that must be responded to and that it is quite a time consuming process. Because so much communication is involved, its essential for us to develop these skills and to be able to work with a variety of people.
Another skill that is important to the success of many of the careers was to be able to have a range of abilities. For example, being a high school or college coach doesn't just involve coaching. You must be able to budget, plan training and match schedules and recruit, just to name a few!
These presentations have taught me that even if you think you know what you want to do, its essential to seek out experiences that will allow you to find out more. This can help you gain the knowledge needed to help you decide what career is for you.

Over the past three class periods I have heard many presentations about my fellow classmates and their professional development projects. Something that struck me was the amount of coaches and teachers that are in the class, and how the majority of those want to do both. It speaks to the quality of the high school coaches that we have that the students would want to follow in their footsteps and teach/coach high school student-athletes. Most people shadowed someone close to them, someone they were familiar with. This level of familiarity added to the comfort level of everyone, and allowed them to get the full benefit of the experience. I know it helped me a lot to be comfortable with the person that I was shadowing, and I think it allowed both of us to be more candid when having certain discussions.

Overall my takeaway from this experience and from listening to everyone's presentations is that we all want to help people, if not teaching and coaching then in some sort of medical profession. We have all had good experiences and mentors growing up, and now we all gained experience from those people and that will help us become the people that we want to be down the road. We want to give back and help young people by taking our experience and knowledge, and passing it down to the younger generation so they can have the same types of experiences that we all had.

Professional development--and development in general--is a beautiful thing. I've experienced immeasurable personal growth simply through hearing my classmates talk about their experiences.

I appreciated that pretty much everyone found their own niche and corresponding person to follow. Prior to these presentations, I did not know the cost of a customized knee brace, why the Rec Center egg hunt was a struggle, or how much time goes into being a high school teacher-coach.

The other nice thing was getting some more career options. And it's great to know that if I ever want to find out more about a particular job or position, I can just shadow someone. Although I wonder how well that would work if I just emailed a random person...I guess I'll have to find out...next winter...

This project has inspired me to contact the city of Minneapolis so that I may learn what it's like to drive a snowplow! DREAMS REALLY DO COME TRUE!

It is very interesting to hear what future careers students are interested in. There is a surprising amount of students that want to be teachers. It was also surprising to me that I am one of the few people who wants to work on the business side of sports. The most popular occupations seem to be teaching and coaching. For those that want to teach/coach high school, I am curious which one propels the other. Do students choose teaching as their major because ideally they want to coach high school sports? Or do they want to be a high school teacher and look at coaching as a fun job on the side? The careers in the this class differ significantly from many of my other classes. In those classes, almost everyone wants to work in the front office or be a coach of a professional team. Here, the majority of students want to work/coach at a high school level.

I liked hearing all the different career options. I had never thought of Recreation Programming as a career in sport management until a classmate's presentation. It would be a fun career, as it combines sports and event planning. For those students who chose something like physical therapy, the career decision was often a result of a student's injury and their experiences with the treatment that followed.

I think what most students took away from this project was how much they learned about the day-to-day activities of the jobs, especially from a business/administrative side. While there was a varying level of paperwork that came with each job, it was still understood that paperwork is necessary. However, part of the appeal of working in sports is that it is not your typical desk job. In general, people in class all want to have a job that allows for direct interaction with others.

From listening to my classmates present their projects, there are a number of common themes that have been prevalent. Mainly, each classmate has done their respective project with someone familiar to them. Either someone from their past or someone they currently have a relationship with. Many classmates also chose to stick within their specific environment, for example jobs, or sports teams. The next main take-away point is that the majority of classmates have expressed a sense of happiness upon completion of this project. I would assume that because most everyone chose to shadow someone from their prospective field of work that the sense of happiness is a good thing, and it shows that everyone is happy with the choice they have made to pursue a specific career. Lastly another trend that each presentation has shown is personal experience. It seems that each person had had some personal experience that happened in their life that lead them to make a greater connection with their specific job shadow.

The past few classes of presentations we had have been great. It has been very interesting seeing everyone go through different experiences with the activities they do so consistently and enjoyably. I think that the most important thing in which I have learned from all of the different presentations is the training and full understanding to which it takes to prepare for a job. These professional development projects should help us to understand whether or not we will actually enjoy these activities as an every day job for the rest of our lives. One of the biggest aspects of training that I noticed keeps popping up is the broad base of networking. Today's economy consistently uses the motto "it's not what you know, but who you know." This motto can be argued but I think it has a lot to do with how our society has evolved. Overall despite the learning experiences for homework of the project it was also very enjoyable doing a project that was fun to perform.