mini paper #4

Aaron Rodriguez

August 5, 2019

Mini Paper #4

Cohort 21S

As a middle schooler and leading into my early years of high school, I went into a phase of watching a lot of motivational videos. A lot of these videos helped me to gain an interest in focusing on what I wanted to do in life. As I watch the various number of videos the one phrase that was most memorable to me was “What is your why?” This phrase was a phrase that I pondered upon since I did not know what I wanted to do with my life till I figured out what I wanted to do with my life in my sophomore year of high school, Sport Management. In my sophomore year in high school, I knew that my dream was to be in the Sport Management field and it was all inspired by the movie Moneyball. Interestingly, the movie was about Billy Bean the general manager of the Oakland Athletics and also alumni of my high school, Mt. Carmel. Instantly, because we came from the same high school I looked up to him because we had come from the same school and I believed I could be like him. The movie was about a baseball player who had a career-ending injury early in his career who decided to use his knowledge and connections to pursue a career in the front office of the Oakland Athletics. Seeing his struggle of working with the Oakland Athletics and producing a successful team with a low budget and a failing culture by finding players that were odd but still could produce was inspiring. His experience showed me that people can be successful even if they are not in the best circumstance. In Wooden (2005) he described his practice facilities and how they were not adequate to produce a national championship team but despite that he had insufficient facilities he didn’t look for excuses he looked for solutions,“ There would be no excuses in the future, only a careless search for solutions” (p.195). Wooden doesn't give any excuses to give up, but looks for solutions. This can connect to my journey in sport as well as in life. While in college I didn’t go to the best school with the best facilities and prestigious reputation but, through hard work, determination and “ a careless search for solutions” I was able to to use the resources I did have to get to where I am today, in a prestigious graduate school. During this time I didn’t look for excuses I looked for solutions no matter how long it took this helped me discover my greatest strength, resiliency. Wooden (2005) depicts that in order to become successful you must work hard now “As a director, I would try to teach them how to give the best performance possible during the rehearsals” (p.214). Wooden is talking about that in order to get to the position that you want to be in life you must work at it now. This hard work ethic mentality has become my greatest strength. My resiliency, the willingness to wake up really early and stay up late to get work done has pushed me through my college career, this became more prominent as I had many papers where I would stay up all night and in a couple of cases stay up two days to finish the paper. It didn’t matter how tired I was or however I was feeling, I had to push my body to its limits and beyond to get things done. Looking back on it I felt it was all worth it because for those small moments of mental pain and fatigue I had a large reward of knowledge and experience (and a good grade). I continue to have this similar mindset as I am in my master’s program of willing to make a sacrifice for a greater reward spending as much time needed in order to get assignments done and look for opportunities in the field of sport. Opportunities are now in an abundance and I am looking to take advantage of these opportunities such as internships, job opportunities, and the alumni network. Tapping into these opportunities will be beneficial to my growth in the sports industry to help me understand my interests in the field, as long as I work hard. Currently, my interests are in basketball, baseball, and football and the marketing tactics of these organizations to develop marketing plans. These functions of the business interest me because they can take organizations and events and turn them from a small event to a mega-event through marketing and public relations tactics. I am looking to explore these opportunities through my current opportunities with Girls Football Association and the Los Angeles Rams. Each opportunity allows me to explore two aspects of marketing within the sports industry. With Girls Football Association I am developing schools to target and develop a marketing plan in order to inform theses schools about the opportunity of establishing girls football at their campus. This is very different from the Los Angeles Rams job where I am going to be a part of the more interactive part of marketing. I will be talking to people and informing them of the 50/50 raffle ticket program and answer any questions they have about it.  In order to be truly successful in pursuing these opportunities, I not only need to understand my reasons for pursuing my goals and strengths but also my weaknesses so I can improve upon them.

One of them is my insensitivity, usually when people come to me with their problems, especially when I am working. My drive within myself is felt by others and when I get into my zone there is nothing that will distract me which makes me ignore or become insensitive to others.This has been shown mostly with my conversations with my parents. Most times when they call, I am very focused on my work and their call in my head is a distraction and I try and make the conversation as short as possible. I can tell that my parents still want to talk to me and ask about everything that I am doing. However, I know I have things to do so I try and cut the conversation so I can get back to what I am doing. This is something that I need to improve on because in the future I will be working in teams and we constantly need to be collaborating especially in times of stressful situations to find solutions.

Looking back on all my experiences I want to answer the question “What is your why?” Through all my experiences I have found that my why is upholding a legacy and developing my own. From that moment of watching Moneyball and seeing that someone from the same high school could accomplish being a successful general manager started my journey to do the same and become like him and develop my own legacy. As I was in my junior year of high school I began to that when the moment comes when I die I want something good to be said about me. I wanted to have a life, a life that mattered and not just merely existed on the planet. This pursuit of legacy has pushed me to do things that are uncomfortable Wooden speaks upon this when he speaks upon the NCAA banning dunking in the league “Although I supported outlawing the dunk for several reasons, including that it turned into a showboating device” (p.226). This new rule was a joy to Coach Wooden, but it did not sit well with star player Lewis Alcindor. From this new rule, Alcindor had to develop other moves in his game and from this hard work and the unforeseen circumstance it helped develop an unforeseen skill the “Kareem Sky Hook”. During my life, I was able to be put into situations where I had to be uncomfortable. Once I had experienced them and overcame them I actually began to look for them. I joined an organization, I competed in marketing research competitions and I decided to apply for graduate school. All of these started as something that was uncomfortable and when they asked if I wanted to join no matter how unsure I was about the situation, I just raised my hand and signed up. That is the first step to being successful in anything, signing up. Once I had the courage to sign up I found that there was no turning back I had to complete what I had signed up for and do my best in it and put in the work. Being put in these uncomfortable situations helped me develop my “Sky Hook”. I was able to develop good social skills which helped me with gaining the courage to meet new people. Other skills that I developed was my leadership skills and this was exercised by developing and coordinating projects. My leadership and social skills were constantly tested when I had to collaborate with new people for projects and had to reach out to new organizations on and off-campus in order to coordinate an event. Some projects included various community service projects, social events and my largest project the Forget-Us-Not benefit concert. During this event, I had to include all of the skills that I learned. I had to use my social skills to collaborate with my team as well as the non-profit organization which we were working with. I also had to use my resiliency and leadership skills to coordinate and manage the event while being prepared for any snafus.  All of my uncomfortable situations helped develop my greatest skills. These skills help me to continue my journey of life and to pursue the construction of my legacy to answer my “why?”

References

John wooden wooden on leadership how to create a winning organization (2005, McGraw hill)