Sami's Girl Scout Gold Award - The Process Begins . . .

Sami's status as a 15-year-old is getting rather confusing. She is a freshman in high school, but a senior in Girl Scouts. She's also approaching young womanhood and leaving her girlhood behind, so is she really a Girl Scout or a Young Lady Scout? Okay, maybe I'm nitpicking here.

One of the things that the young ladies in Girl Scouts work on is the Girl Scout Gold Award. This is the highest award and honor that a Girl Scout can earn. She must be at least 15 and a registered Girl Scout, and, I think, have earned her Silver Award. Sami seamlessly earned her Silver Award last year with her previous troop working on a bird sanctuary in one of the Girl Scout camps. It was lovely and all the girls worked hard on it.

The Gold Award is going to be a completely different story. I promised Sami I would chronicle her progress here on my blog, so prepare to be entertained (I hope).

A few weeks ago, she and I attended the Gold Award workshop to learn how she should go about earning this award. The three-hour workshop was the most grueling session I have ever attended. I'm sure the ladies who put together the presentation put a lot of thought into it, but really, they made it more complicated than it needed to be. Sami was so overwhelmed, she broke down and cried.

The seminar started out pleasantly enough. The girls each found their seats after registering, some of them from the same troop. Sami was the only one from her troop, so she didn't know anyone there. That's never a problem for Sami, as my family and friends all know. Before long, she was chatting it up with the two other girls at her table as though she had known them her whole life - Yep, that's my girl. She must get it from her Irish ancestors.

The presenters were two women who, near as I could tell, must have never given a presentation before. Please forgive my business snobbery here, but I've done enough presentations to recognize a newbie. These ladies not only bounced around in the slide show, thus losing most of us adults in the back of the room, they bounced around in their lecture as well. One Girl Scout leader sitting next to me quickly gave up trying to take notes and looked very frustrated.

Midway through the presentation, they had an icebreaker. Why they waited until this point to do this is anyone's guess. Sami enjoyed the icebreaker and at that time, traded e-mails and phone numbers with her table partners. (Her Irish grandfather would have been so proud.)

The rest of the session was more confusing with each slide and this was when Sami broke down and cried. Not hysterical sobbing - that's not Sami's way, but quiet tears rolling down her cheeks. No one stepped forward to help her calm down until break time when I went to her to see if she was okay. I knew she needed help and I asked one of the presenters if Sami could just have a printout of the slide show. They said she had all the information in her possession and didn't need the slides. Trying to calm her down, I whispered to her that I would go over everything when we got home. I was thinking that passing the health care reform bill in Congress would be easier than this mess.

When we got home, Sami put down all the material she gathered from the workshop and just walked away from it. I think if it spontaneously combusted, she wouldn't be upset. A few days later I reviewed the material and placed an call to her Scout leader. The two of us talked about what her first step should be and we boiled down everything to more manageable steps for her. We found that this process wasn't as bad as presented and if Sami stayed focused on the small, baby steps, she could get it accomplished without too much trouble. Her leader pointed out to her that she already began several of the steps without even knowing it. We assured her that all was going to be okay.

She feels better about this now and began discussing ideas for her project just the other day. I think we have begun.