By Patience Kollie
While you have earned your spot in training, everything has just begun. Summer training is only a small portion of the entire story, and it is up to you to fill the rest of it. My name is Patience Kollie. I am part of the Class of 2020, and during this time I didn’t know what to do, what to expect, or what I would be after this training. But, summer training led me to make amazing new friends, discover more about myself, and it opened opportunities for myself, like earning a full ride scholarship. That’s just my story, but yours could be greater. All of this was possible because I started with one thing – summer training – and you could accomplish it, as well.
As you all are reading this, you’re probably feeling one of two things: Ecstatic or absolutely terrified. I was a mix of both, but I wish I had gone into training with someone’s insight to calm my nerves or a run-down into what I could expect.
I will be doing one of those two things: calming your nerves. Because the part of training that made it fun every day, for all eight weeks, was not knowing what exactly to expect. The most important piece of advice I will give to the incoming Class of 2021 is to be curious. Be curious about what you’re learning. Be curious about who’s around. Be curious about yourself and how you can grow through this training because when you do that, you are giving yourself the opportunity to envision yourself in the internship.
Be proud of yourself because you’ve earned this spot in training. Have you realized that one of the reasons you earned the spot was by being curious? After first hearing about Genesys Works, you had to go out of your way to learn more about the program. Now, you’ve gone through the interview, the selection process, and here you are. This same sense of curiosity applies to training. Learn who is around you because this will continue to be important after training. You will need to apply this in the workplace, and your peers can be such a good resource when it comes to implementing skills you learned during summer training.
And, as you’re making great new connections in the workplace, don’t forget to remain curious about your work in training because these lessons will definitely need to be applied in a corporate setting. If you familiarize yourself with your role and seek to know more of your peers and the people around, people will notice that.
Last but not least, be curious about yourself. Who are you? Who are you becoming? Who do you want to become? Sometimes, people never try to answer these questions, and instead, they are just left in the back of our minds. However, when you are curious about these questions, you have the opportunity to piece together missing parts of the puzzle.
You are like a puzzle because you start out incomplete. If you are not curious, you remain incomplete and will never get to see the full picture. But, when you search for those missing pieces, the full picture slowly starts to come together. And just like that, you’ll realize that all you had to do was take one step.
One step. One action. Be Curious.
About the Writer
My name is Patience Kollie, and I am a Liberian American. Just recently, I was a senior at Champlin Park High School. Now, however, I will be attending Concordia College Moorhead to study the pre-physician major. I intend to get my bachelor’s and go on to PA school. I have goals to become a self-sufficient businesswoman with a career in the medical field, and maybe, one day I can go back to my community in Liberia and return the favor to them. I currently intern at Target’s North Campus as a Client Support Center Specialist.
