Have you ever accepted an invitation from a person or group thinking it was going to be a great but realized a little too late the work associated with accepting the invitation? For the person extending the invitation it is almost equivalent to telling a lie. The invitee should expose and explain all duties or 'strings' attached to their invitation and not just let the 'invited' blindly follow a path of assumptions.
For example:
I was invited to take part in a discussion group consisting of about 25 seniors. The invitation just stated the time and place for the first meeting. It also mentioned that there would be a total of about 4 meetings. I figured this would be a fun time to reflect with other peers on the past four years at college as well as the plans we had for the future. Four meetings at about an hour each did not seem like such a huge commitment so I said, sure.
We had the first meeting. Only after we were all graciously comforted, given materials, priased and thanked for signing up were we all explained our responsibilities now asmembers of this discussion group. We were going to meet weekly for the next two months and we had to compose a reflective paper and then present that paper. Not super hard work, but the problem is I thought I was signing up for something simple and not very time consuming. It turns out accepting that seemingly great invite just cost me a paper and over 8 hours or meetings. Now this would not be so bad if I was living life as a true senior with the minimum amount of credits and carefree semester, but I am VERY LIMITED on time as it is and this semester is one of my hardest academically. The work will not be hard but will take time, time I am already lacking.
If I would have known the strings attached to the invite I probably would have thought twice. I feel as though I was lied to because not everything was told to me up front; however, I feel too bad to back down now. I guess it is partly my fault for just assuming what the invited meant but I feel as though I was blindly misinformed. I know I accepted an invitation to provide senior reflections but I feel as though I was tricked into more than I bargained for.
For example:
I was invited to take part in a discussion group consisting of about 25 seniors. The invitation just stated the time and place for the first meeting. It also mentioned that there would be a total of about 4 meetings. I figured this would be a fun time to reflect with other peers on the past four years at college as well as the plans we had for the future. Four meetings at about an hour each did not seem like such a huge commitment so I said, sure.
We had the first meeting. Only after we were all graciously comforted, given materials, priased and thanked for signing up were we all explained our responsibilities now asmembers of this discussion group. We were going to meet weekly for the next two months and we had to compose a reflective paper and then present that paper. Not super hard work, but the problem is I thought I was signing up for something simple and not very time consuming. It turns out accepting that seemingly great invite just cost me a paper and over 8 hours or meetings. Now this would not be so bad if I was living life as a true senior with the minimum amount of credits and carefree semester, but I am VERY LIMITED on time as it is and this semester is one of my hardest academically. The work will not be hard but will take time, time I am already lacking.
If I would have known the strings attached to the invite I probably would have thought twice. I feel as though I was lied to because not everything was told to me up front; however, I feel too bad to back down now. I guess it is partly my fault for just assuming what the invited meant but I feel as though I was blindly misinformed. I know I accepted an invitation to provide senior reflections but I feel as though I was tricked into more than I bargained for.
No comments:
Post a Comment