I was pretty excited about Wednesday and being with the young men again. I knew going into the position that it was going to take a lot of work, but I was having some anxiety attacks trying to get things together so the boys have a good experience. When I got to the church, I had only two boys and they were not in uniform. Not a problem yet because I haven't told them of my expectations for them yet. My goal was to get to know the young men better and to catch them up on their advancements. One boy was not registered in my unit and had some merit badges missing from his record (due to him not being registered in our unit) and the other had no rank advancements recorded.
Our Troop is getting ready for their week long summer camp in a couple of weeks and i have three boys going with them and so what was supposed to be my first team meeting became a info dump on camp that should have been done a couple of months ago. The scoutmaster and my assistant team coach really had no clue what was going on and it made me upset. I eventually talked to both of my young men and got their records fixed.
Word of advice: Please record advancements in a young man's book and some form of back-up. If it wasn't for a young man's book and his former scoutmaster's signatures in the book, I don't think his record would have been corrected.
Even though I had a plan and I was a little upset during the meeting, I left thinking that any leader could take that experience and have it set the tone for the rest of their tenure. Days like this will happen to anyone. Sometimes you need to look at the bigger picture. I have three boys going on this summer camp. It was important for them and for me to know what they will be doing and to help them prepare for camp. I also accomplished what I wanted that night and was actually surprised how excited the boys were knowing how close they were in advancing. I was able (I hope) to build that relationship of trust. I also had one of the boys parents show up and i was able to talk to him and I was able to build his trust also.
So, we've decided that the month of July we'll take it easy due to camp and youth conference. In August, we will start on our program and get things rockin'.
