For those of you that don’t know, I attended Boston University for both my undergraduate and graduate carrier. I’m a proud Terrier and have always wanted to give back by supervising graduate students. I waited until I had a few years of experience before I agreed to take on a student. This past fall, I supervised my first student and loved it. I had a student with a strong academic background and clinical skills who was always very professional. Taking on a role of being a supervisor made me realize how much I really do know in our field and was also a wonderful learning experience for me.
Boston University holds an Annual Supervisor Appreciation event each year for the professionals who have supervised their students. This year the speaker was Rachel Reiser. She is the founder and principal of Generationally Speaking. She has researched, written, and presented extensively on the demographics and psychographics of the Millennial Generation including topics such as the multi-generational workplace and intergenerational communication. Her book, Millennials on Board: The Impact of the Rising Generation on the Workplace, was released in February 2010.
To be honest I didn’t have high expectations considering Rachel has nothing to do with the speech and language field and the event was taking place at 9am on a Saturday morning. However, I couldn’t have been more pleasantly surprised. Rachel did a fabulous job describing all the various generations, giving their positive and negative traits, all while intermixing humor and sarcasm. Based on the research on the Millennial generation, Rachel recommended ways to provide guidance while building independence with our students. In addition she spoke about common issues that arise when supervising the Millennial generation especially with technology. It was a great discussion. Rachel spoke for a bit and then we broke out into focus groups to discuss various scenarios that could occur while supervising students. They encouraged us to consider generational differences as well as discuss various ways of handling the situations. The event was a great learning and networking experience. I’m definitely adding Rachel’s book to my summer reading list!