We're all student leaders right, and with the same job we have the overall same objective with our residents. We hope to make the best experience for our residents year after year and over the course of time, some really AMAZING things happen. People in the department or schools all across the world think of some very unique ideas that could be adaptable in a variety of different spaces.
There comes a weird saying when people might think of it as "stealing." I mean yes, the idea might have been rooted somewhere else, but when somethings great, there's no point in letting it only be great once when it could benefit so many other residents in other places. I think we have to think about it as sharing. As we were always told growing up "sharing is caring."
I think it is important to give credit where credit is due. If you're adapting a program, shoutout the original student leaders who had thought of the idea. Honestly it is such flattery to have your program adapted by someone else. I was once told by someone that they wanted to do my program from the previous year and THAT'S SUCH A COMPLIMENT. To know that someone thought your program was so amazing that they wanted to recreate it. I felt beyond happy with this. I was able to impact residents positively and now another student leader can as well. That's impactful.
Here's the thing with "stealing" besides finding a way to tell the original person who did the program that it was phenomenal and that you want to find a way to adapt it, it is important to find a way to adapt it. Make it your own and find a way to do it to better appeal to your own residents. For example, my first year as a RA I planned a birthday party program for my residents honoring each and every one of them and it even had themed food all around their interests. This was program specifically tailored to my residents and their interests. We had grilled cheeses because they had a debate regarding if it was a snack or a meal, and many other specialized components that I'm sure I have mentioned before in a previous blog post. It is important to interpret it and use the main original idea but further it to become even better.
To often the word of stealing is thrown around, and I don't think I really do believe in stealing in the work place. Well at least what I'm referring to, not stealing when it comes to ideas. After all we have many requirements throughout the year for programs and sometimes it's hard to always come up with an outside the box kind of idea every time, but if you know someone who had a program in a building elsewhere that went amazing, why not try and use that idea? I highly encourage if a person chooses to do this, write an OTM, or an Of the Month about the person's program first before you adapt it because obviously you thought it was kind of great. You can do that with this link: https://otms.nrhh.org/ This helps to recognize a previous amazing idea and then attempt to take the idea even further to touch the lives of many other residents. We continue to do the most for our residents and sometimes when people have prior experience, we can use their knowledge to help us grow as a leader.
Like I said there are student leaders EVERYWHERE, the chance that you think of something that no one has ever done before is pretty slim, though I continue to reach to try and achieve this goal. While you could take a base program someone has done, make it something totally new with a similar message to create something original and fun for your residents. After all how could we not use Pinterest for inspiration every once and a while. Pinterest is like everything to a student leader, forget instagram, snapchat, and even you twitter, it is all about PINTEREST...but it's inspo! Use that lil creative head of yours to do something even more special.
Let this be known I don't support stealing, but when an idea is good, learning to share it with others with the same goals will help programs, people, and how cool would it be to have someone want to do YOUR program? I could only hope it happens for me again :)
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