June is Month 1 of 14 on my ProGen49 journey! We had a pre-assignment where we had to practice giving feedback. I was nervous about submitting my feedback. I followed their suggestion, though, and did it on my own without looking at other’s submissions.
Of course I DID look at the other’s submissions before I sent in mine and I was comforted to see that my answers were very similar to others. Phew!
We had our first virtual group discussion tonight where we got to get to know each other. ProGen is very well set up where they had discussion questions written out for us to help break the ice and get the conversation going. I felt extremely nervous about meeting everyone and worried that I am not up to their level of mastery (mostly because I have not gone through the Boston University program) but after this first meeting, I felt much better. I shared my feelings that I tend to be more sensitive and am nervous about receiving critical feedback. About half of the group said they were sensitive like me and the other half said they were more blunt.
Just expressing my fears to them made me already start to feel better and begin to feel trust in the group. I had said to them, that I was sure it wouldn’t be long before I feel that they were a “safe place” for me.
Our first assignment this month is to create a locality guide for a place we are researching in. That sounds fun and I’m looking forward to starting it!