Sustaining Enthusiasm
Here are tips on how to keep the good vibe for many years to come!
Avoiding Burnout
You need to set boundaries along with your goals throughout the year to make sure you do not overstretch yourself. Remember this is a marathon, not a month- or year-long sprint. It is likely you will overextend yourself and underestimate your program's needs in the first year. If this happens in the second year, that would be unfortunate. In the third year, it indicates a failure in your planning process. Identify an area to change to avoid burnout in the future.
Choosing Captains for Next Year
Consider interviewing for green living program (GLP) captains in the spring of your first year to ensure continuity in leadership from one academic year to the next. You can also consider having a revolving captain system, in which one captain takes the helm at the beginning of the fall semester, the other at the beginning of the spring semester. This way you always have one captain who has been working with the program and can help get the new captain up to speed.
The benefit to having a captain system where both start at the same time is that the captains will develop a strong partnership and will work well as a team by the second semester.
No matter what captain system you use, it is important to create continuity in student and program leadership.
Choosing Next Year's Reps
Although we have not tried this yet at the Harvard Green Campus Initiative, you can consider hiring fall reps in the springtime before school ends. The benefit to this would be that your reps could do research over the summertime and would know to come back to school early for orientation. As a result, they would be ready to start their GLP work as soon as students move onto campus.
Seeking Improvements from One Year to the Next
It is always good to review what happened during the last GLP season when coming up with the goals for the future. Consider how activities worked previously when crafting a calendar and activity goal list for future years.
The End is the Beginning: Learning to (Re)Cycle Your Program
When your program ends in one year, the cycle begins for prepping for the next. When (re)cycling through your annual plan, consider the importance of the following:
- Signature events are well-planned, annual events that allow you to maximize coverage of what is going on and maximize the expectations of the campus community.
- Milestones create continuity across the years and allow you to compare between time periods.
- Reputation expands each year as new opportunities open up. Be ready as doors open with gains in legitimacy and reputation.