11/29/08-12/18/09 [Work Work Work for Operation Xmas]

This project was more work than I could have mentally prepared for.  Operation Christmas was definitely last minute idea, so next year I need to start everything earlier.  Making profiles was horribly tedious, it took roughly 15 hours.  I worked on them for a couple hours the Saturday night when I came back.  Sunday, I worked for about 12 hours and finished most of the profiles.  Finally, Monday I worked for another hour or so and I finished it up.  Printing the actual profiles wasn't that complicated.  Brandon handled the formatting of the profiles and helped me cut most of them.

Getting sponsors was kind of scary.  At first I was freaking out because I thought that it would be SOO much work to get an extra 100 sponsors.  I got a lot of people involved and I did it pretty quickly, within a couple of days.  I am pretty proud of myself actually, getting 145 sponsors is no easy task.  I made a drop-off point at Whittier College for my friends at work and Whittier College students that I got involved.  I made a drop-off point at LHHPC for everyone else.  I do not think many people read my guideline letter, because I definitely put all the information people needed, but they still called me to ask questions.  Haha oh well.  

I think making sure that all of the gifts were actually accounted for and brought in was more work than getting sponsors.  3 sponsors flaked completely (from Whittier College) and 3 sponsors only purchased gifts, not shoes.  Luckily, I was able to find sponsors to replace those who flaked.  With the busy-ness of school/finals, I did not give much thought or effort towards Operation Christmas until the 12th.  That was really intense, because I should have called/sent emails to remind people that the gifts were either due really soon.  I basically waited until Monday 15th (which was the original/general deadline) to start checking if all the gifts/toys were accounted for.  I spent Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday (until 10:30pm) running around like a maniac picking up gifts and harassing people to drop their stuff off asap.  It was really frustrating trying to get everything together.  I don't know how many times or how many different ways I can tell people to label their gifts/shoes with the kids first AND last name for them to actually do it... but that was probably the problem I ran into the most.  The second most frequent problem was sponsors not knowing that they needed to get gifts AND shoes, I need to make that more clear in the future.

This was a great experience though, I feel like I have learned a lot.  Next year will be a great.  I will use my past mistakes to ensure next year goes more smoothly.  I need to think of another name for it haha.