Blog Post 2:

In my time at the museum, I learned about the amount of time and passion it takes to not only handle the museum side of things but also take care of Los Des. This means one of the biggest things I would come to do, attend administrative tasks with Rikki (for the most part). I had previous experience from doing administrative work from at my home institution being an admin assistant for head departments, but this was a completely different experiences. This entailed a couple of things: Going to meetings, seeing how the museum holds itself in these settings, seeing other key players in Tucson, and trying to wrap my head around ways that historians and community members interact. One of the first kind of “meetings” I attended was the my formal introduction to working, It was a nice meeting at a coffee restaurant with Rikki and Alisha. They sat me down and talked to me about my entire schedule and where I would fit into the museum, and any goals I had. I now reflect and realize that was an administrative meeting; I was just not realizing it at that moment. I think about the rest of the meetings in which I attended (which was a lot to say) and that they all were very different but were able to give me good insight into different parts of Tucson and just the art industry here and how it interacts with the community and government. I attended a Los Des Meeting; it was my first interaction with the Elders, so I was very appreciative of the opportunity to get to speak to all (or most) who attended the meeting. I also saw what it took for Rikki to lead the meeting. I admire her because as a leader I always found it hard to find ways to walk through a meeting, whether it was keeping on time or just trying to keep focused on one topic at a time. She led the meeting with efficiency, and I really liked her style of leadership, it was also cool to see her notes and the ways that she organized things, it made it very readable and understandable. Even someone like me, could follow along very clearly. It made me reflect on my time as president of numerous organizations and how I could implement her style of leadership to help me. A couple of meetings I would attend after this would be in preparation for events that we were having. I saw in just what ways that organizations interact and come together for a collective purpose, it was inspiring to see the ways organizations were willing to do this work and see all the positive that was to come from this. Another piece of these administrative meetings was attending large meetings with historians and other community members. It was interesting to see the way that historians were acting in a meeting but it helped me form an opinion on the way they think about big community projects and how it effects historical precedents and structures. I, however, can say that it does not take a lot to just be nice when someone is presenting. These were all super interesting moments for me and I am definitely looking forward to taking back what I have learned, Rikki is an amazing leader and I would never want her job (respectfully) but i admire her for it.