#AMCfam

Greg Awards, Spirit of the Gregs certificate

When in the course of blogging events it becomes necessary to abandon the draft of a blog and change gears the best reasons to do so is because you won a Greg award.

Not the blogging award, but still (that deservedly went to Sierra’s To Kill a Mocking Nerd).

The Spirit of the Gregs is an award given to a student in each class of each year of my program at St. Lawrence College. It is part of a larger series of awards, called the Gregs, that recognize achievements by students in many categories including video production, creativity, advertising plan creation and execution, and more.

In the first year of my program there are two classes (sections), which means there are two recipients of the Spirit of the Gregs award each year. Except this year. This year, for the first time ever, both classes voted for one person: me.

During the presentation of the award, program coordinator Kathy Patterson talked about the strong bond that is formed within our program between students, one that is not often found in other programs at St. Lawrence College, or in other schools. We call it #AMCfam. It connects first year students to alumni from the first cohort of students who started in 1967.

#AMCfam is what makes it so easy to have spirit for this program, for these people. No matter whether I am having the worst day, whether my mental health is at its lowest, rolling out of bed and spending time with my #AMCfam universally improves my day.

In one of our Perspectives of Leadership classes we talked about the stages of team development — forming, storming, norming, and performing — and it was posited that none of the teams in the class had yet made it to the final stage where the members of the team become invested in the achievement and development of its other members. While that was likely true of our individual teams, I was struck at the time by the thought that the greater whole of the class itself had reached the performing stage some time ago in no small part because of #AMCfam. I plan to write a whole blog post about this thought.

On the first day of classes we were told “be open to new friendships. This program really is like a family and many of these relationships will last your lifetime, personally and professionally.”

Nothing could be more true. See you next year at the 40th Greg Awards

Greg Awards poster.

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