Carrie Chalfant

When I first got to college, I knew I wanted to build my leadership skills. This was a little surprising to people who I met, because I was very shy. I knew that my confidence--in general, a realization of agency over myself and my surroundings--would grow, if I had chances to prove my abilities. Still, though I may have imagined it, even one of my favorite teachers my first semester seemed a little worried for me when I said I wanted to apply to different leadership programs on campus, and hold leadership positions. I was determined after that conversation to do those things successfully, regardless of my quiet demeanor. See my early personal goals for college in my University 101 Backroads paper, attached above.

 

To start, I tried to educate myself on leadership. I’ve gone to multiple conferences at Carolina to build my skills in student leadership. I’m an alumnus of the USC Service Leadership Institute 2013, Catalyst 2013, USC Alternative Break Winter 2013, Student Leadership and Diversity Conference 2014, and the Capstone Student Leaders Retreats in 2014 and 2015. What really taught me a sense of agency as a person and leader, however, was putting the principles I learned at these conferences into action, first through Capstone, then in theatre as a stage manager, director, and producer. In each experience, I learned how to do much that was unfamiliar. On this page, I will talk about Capstone and stage management. 

 

The Capstone Scholars Program provided the first USC leadership role I was involved in. My first semester, I went to many of the events that the Capstone Scholars Program and my Capstone Ambassadors provided. In my small Ambassador group, we went volunteering at the Pets, Inc. thrift store, and had dinner and coffee while we talked about our goals and asked questions of our upperclassmen ambassadors. The Ambassadors were the people I could go to with questions about my major too, because they were in similar programs to me. I appreciated their help enough that I applied to be an Ambassador the next year, and I was accepted.

 

It was my first real leadership role at USC, and I was very excited. I was also nervous, because the lack of attendance in the Ambassadors’ meetings meant that they would be condensing the program; I was at first in charge of 150 students, the Arts and Social Sciences students, with only one partner. I would say we did a good job of communicating events by email, making the events flexible for an uncertain number of people, and diversifying our events to be applicable to a variety of majors. We had two events a month for the Fall 2014 semester, one academic and one social. Some of the events we came up with included a tour of the State House, a trip to Riverbanks Zoo, a visit to the art museum, a movie night on women’s education with a guest professor to comment, and a volunteering trip to play games with seniors in an assisted living facility. I had a good time organizing the events, and was pleasantly surprised at how many events we were able to plan. Unfortunately, the most people we ever had at an event was about eight. This was good in terms of manageability, but it was a problem that was across the board in the Ambassadors program. It was cancelled after that year, but I learned a great deal about the practical points of general event management.

 

There were other opportunities for leadership, and as an Ambassador I had formed a good relationship with the faculty advisor, Theresa Harrison, of a brand-new leadership internship program through Capstone. When I was accepted to the Capstone Programming Committee as Vice President of Social Affairs, I had no idea how helpful and hands-on it would be. With our graduate student assistant, during the 2015-16 school year we were in charge of: implementing events for Fall 2015; brainstorming, planning, and implementing events for Spring 2016 while individually leading a committee of helpers; and brainstorming and planning events for the Fall 2016 semester, leaving detailed plans behind for the next group. See my detailed plans for Fall 2016 and some of my sample emails, in pdfs above. We took the charge on a wide variety of events, including a pumpkin carving contest, a canoeing trip, a flag football tournament, a cooking class, an etiquette dinner, and much more. Among other things, we brainstormed many of the events from scratch, learned how to do the ones that had been done before, created online RSVP forms, picked up supplies when necessary, came up with all the details of how the event would go, rented vans for transportation when needed, contacted community partners and caterers, recruited people to help from our committees, emailed signed-up participants with reminders and event details, and we worked the events themselves. The work was time-consuming but actually pretty rewarding. It was neat to see everything come together.

 

It wasn’t always smooth sailing as a leader with Capstone, though. I had a hard time fitting with the group of the committee at first. It had also been occasionally tricky working with my partner from the Ambassadors program. Being an inexperienced leader myself while working with new, peer leaders was an educational process. By the time of the committee, I had put together events as an Ambassador, been a stage manager, and served in high school as a founding member of a benefit group my family created to put on showcases for charity. I knew from experience that when putting things together, having a good core idea isn’t enough to turn an idea into an event, so I asked a lot of detail-oriented questions when people brought up suggestions. Sometimes I felt like I was doing too much of the work, or that people didn’t like my taking initiative when others weren’t; in turn, I’ve learned that sometimes I can seem a bit over-passionate or even unsupportive when I ask lots of questions. I’ve learned through the two experiences that being encouraging first and then asking questions, as gently as possible when working with new people, is important in building team rapport. Eventually, I believe we all came to understand each other's work styles, and all of us stepped up to the plate to get things done. I am proud to have been part of the team.

 

From January 2015 to May 2016, I stage-managed three shows with two different directors, which was a different kind of leadership because I would be leading production performances and assisting in rehearsals, with less planning. I will be stage-managing another production in May, though I will be joining late in the process due to school. I’ve realized that I'm not as fond of stage-management as much as brainstorming events like in Capstone, or in coming up with creative staging ideas like in directing. However, I grew a lot as a leader as a stage-manager. I got to rehearsals first and usually left last. I helped with the audition process multiple times. I helped take care of props and checked sign-in sheets, contacting people who were late. I attended production meetings and took notes. I swept and mopped floors or asked my crew to do so. For one of the directors, I sent emails to the cast daily with rehearsal schedules and reminders, charged glow tape, and locked up the theater. For the other director, I operated light cues and called out crewing cues over an intercom system. I got to see the whole process from the position of essentially, the theatrical equivalent of the conductor, which was cool. I loved seeing how a show would transform over time, and it was a good thing for me to be on the production side of things, and I have a massive respect for my friends who are pursuing stage management as a career.

With all of my leadership roles, I have gained new skills and faced new challenges. It might be a strange parallel, but I used to play those PC disc adventure games, and now I feel like I can do them in real life. I’ve been lucky and worked hard, and have gained a lot as a result. If I had known that gaining personal and leadership confidence would be such a multi-dimensional process, it would perhaps have seemed too overwhelming to aim for early on. Luckily for me, my goal was just the tip of an iceberg that I'm glad I've encountered at USC.