Throughout the past months off of school, each of our summer hobbies has been driving around the metropolitan area in search of possible sponsors. After the list was overflowing with companies, we all got together to host a call center. Each bringing fully charged phones, we sat in separate rooms calling the businesses assigned specifically to us, following a scripted description of our team that we wrote together before the meeting.
Being in the generation of texting, calling professionals over the phone was a new experience. It was a time of fighting off nerves and overall practicing our social and speech skills. Not only were members glued to the phones, others sat at computers furtherly organizing who called who. Finding sponsors is an important aspect of the program, because of the high prices for robot materials.
Throughout the meeting, there were a couple obstacles, such as different versions of the lists floating around, creating a problem of calling the same company twice. This problem was then solved with the idea of each person having their own laptop nearby, because the document online was up to date. The reason we held the call center meeting was because each of our team members held anxiety for calling companies over the phone, mainly because of the “thinking on your feet” aspect, but after all of the practice, we were all willing to make calls during our own free time at home.
After everyone finished calling for the day, we feasted on the random junk food everyone brought, including food from different nationalities (like Ukrainian and Indian… and Canadian). Not only was the experience of calling a learning experience, but trying the variety of food was also an adventure.
