What Comes Next?

Hello everyone!

Yesterday we had our first day of "programming" which is essentially where the Law and Criminal Justice interns come together to learn about different aspects of our professional career and how to create our portfolio for the semester. The lesson was concerning our IDP (Individual Development Plan) part of our portfolio, aka our plan that outlines the goals we have set for ourselves during the 15 weeks that we are here.

This lesson triggered many thoughts for me today. Although everyone else has started their internships already, and I do not start mine until the 30th now (crazy I know!!), I still believe I can create great goals for myself without even knowing the tasks I will be taking on at DLE. In our IDPs we are asked to give two goals apiece for each category: academic, professional, and leadership that we think will help make our time here more efficient and self-fulfilling. I would like to think that setting these goals would be an extremely easy task for me and all of my fellow classmates, but when it comes right down to it, it is rather difficult to put into words just exactly what my goals will be while I am here. Sure it is easy to say that in my academics I would like to continue to grow and learn and for a professional goal I would like to experience all that I can while I am here. But those are far too vague for this assignment, I need to come up with goals that are SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound). While I haven't quite decided what all those will be yet, I do have a few goals in mind that I think are fun to share with you all. From an academic standpoint I have a goal to complete all of our portfolio assignments the week before they are actually due in order to stay ahead with all of my work and set aside one specific day such as Sunday to work on them. From a professional standpoint I have a goal to help DLE in representation of at least one client and help to advise and research as much as I can for that given athlete or athletes. From a leadership standpoint my goal is to work my tail off as a project leader for my class (Anatomy Entrepreneurship) project that we have coming in November. I want to help manage each task for the event we will be hosting and make sure that each aspect is covered within the respected times that they need to be.
These are just a few of the goals that I will use in order to help put together my IDP and I just wanted to share with you all my goals so that hopefully by the end of this semester I will be able to tell you all that I accomplished all of them and more.

It is crazy to say it, but the class I am taking here at TWC called "From Ideas to Action: The Anatomy of Entrepreneurship" will truly change my life and the way that I see my life going. We had our first class last night and let me tell you, I came out of that class thinking I could run the world! I know that is not really going to happen, but you catch my drift, it was utterly amazing and uplifting to think about the fact that if I set goals for myself and truly believe that I can achieve those goals, I can do anything!! My teacher is by far the best one for this class seeing as she has been an entrepreneur herself since she was just 12 years old. She competed in the fashion world among big wigs such as Oscar de la Renta (who actually stole her design ideas from seeing her photos on a wall in a studio), she helped to create the multi million dollar tennis stadium/club here in DC where Venus and Serena Williams grew up playing and she got to watch them rise to stardom from the very beginning. I am telling you our whole class was in awe of how awesome this woman really is and she has definitely inspired me already! In November we are going to get to be a part of Global Entrepreneurship Week in which we get to organize an Idea Discovery Pitch Competition that will bring in well known people from all across this area and we will even get the opportunity to attend a VIP event in which Daymond John (Billionaire FUBU owner and "Shark Tank" TV star) will speak. Hopefully we will get to meet with him and pick his brain.
As you can tell, I am OVERJOYED by all of the things that I will be getting to experience over the next 14 weeks here in DC!! It might be a lot of hard work and some pretty stressful nights but I am so ready for it. I feel so energized and ready to conquer the world, I am realizing that this internship and the opportunities that I am getting are truly my time to step into the next stage in my life. Before, I have just sat back and said, "someday I would like to be a lawyer in the sports world, but that is far down the road, I still have lots of time" and I would just leave it at that. Now I have an entirely different outlook. I can firmly tell you all that my ultimate goal (barring any other life changes, which is always possible no doubt) is to become a somewhat entrepreneur of my own in the sports law world. To one day open my own agency in order to help represent athletes from all walks of life, across all sports, and I truly believe that my experiences here will help me to achieve this goal. Yes it might take me another 8-10 years but I can promise you that I am going to do everything in my power to keep my dream alive! All of you reading this will no doubt help to make this dream of mine a reality through your love, thoughts, and prayers and I know that I could not have this dream or any of these goals without my family and friends so thank you so much!!

I'm sorry this post is so long, I just have so much on my mind that I am so excited to share with everyone. I hope this has made sense to everyone and that I haven't rambled on too much. Like I said before, I couldn't do any of this without all of you who believe in me and I truly feel blessed by God that I am surrounded by such amazing people in my life! There will definitely be more posts coming your way in the days and weeks to come. Thank you all so much!

I want to leave you with a quote by the amazing entrepreneur Mr. Steve Jobs that comes from his commencement speech at Stanford University back in 2005. This quote sums up this post for me. It is time for me to stop wondering when the next step is going to happen, and start believing that it will through courage and hard work!
"Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary." 

Love You All!
Kalee