I had the opportunity to reflect on my BSP with my alumni mentor, Lauren Gardner, the COO at the Emily K Center in Durham, NC. It was great to have an alumni mentor in addition to mentors at TCF and at BSP because she provided a completely new perspective on the experience. I was able to discuss my experience with Lauren without feeling any pressure or having to meet any expectations. Besides this, I was also able to connect with someone who shared many of my interests and I loved hearing about her work at the Emily K Center and her time at Duke!
Through the professional development sessions, I was able to connect with the other BSP Fellows and engage in some topics that I wouldn’t otherwise. The conversation that resonated with me the most was about failure and the cost and benefit of it. As someone who generally qualifies something as successful or not, I’ve always been afraid of failure and the consequences of it. This professional development session focused on looking at failure as a necessary step to success. Of course, this is something that I’ve heard before, but putting it in the context of volunteering and nonprofit work helped me understand the weight of it. In my case, even if the Volunteer Hub wasn’t done in time or had some gaps, I was still helping to lay some groundwork and it wasn’t necessarily a failure.