My Summer Vacation in the JST

[Aimee 1,074]

Having been named one of the GMs for the Junior Showcase Tournament only two weeks ago, it saddens me to see it coming to an end so soon. We are already in the first round of the playoffs and it’s now hitting me, as someone who only just finished their first season, just how quickly everything really moves in the VHL. I haven’t even been here three months and somehow I have almost come full circle with an entire season and off-season. Damn that was fast. But I thought I would take this media spot to talk about my short and soon to be over time with the JST. 

 

I missed out on it when I initially joined, having become a member only a week before the VHLM draft which means I probably missed the JST by just a week or so. Realizing this, it is a bit of a shame that I held off checking that Reddit post. I wish I had had a week or so in the JST to learn how sims worked and had gotten a chance to be forced to interact with other players. I was slow to really engage with anyone just due to the nerves of coming in new to something that felt so established; like the discord server. Not to say that I kept completely to myself but I think it would have given me that extra bump to be more social.

 

But this was about the experience that I did have with the JST so here it is: it’s been fun! As an intro for new players, a time killer for recreates, and a way for newer members like me to get some GM experience, it’s been great. I do wish I had a more social team though. Most of my team never joined the discord but I do really enjoy talking to the ones who did! Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if most of the new players on my team still haven’t logged in since joining the VHL. But that’s okay.

 

The one downside to it that I find is a personal one. I don’t know how to talk to players like a GM without sounding like an actual coach. We all know realistically that none of us has any control as to how a game turns out and the most all of us can really do is earn TPE and apply it as best as we think we should. Everything else is up to the sim program. So I think that if I were to ever become AGM or GM of a team, that’s one thing I want to work on; my communication with my players. I want and need to figure out how to engage them more than just a daily “atta boy” after the results come through. But that could also be my social anxieties preventing me from wanting to look stupid. Who knows. Point is, I know it’s something I should work on and I’m going to spend the rest of the JST playoffs doing what I can to improve that skill.

 

#BunsofSteel 

 

516 words for week ending 8/28/2022

[jacobcarson877 2,432]

Definitely something that I continue to work on actively! It really is crazy how fast time can move here, I mean i just wrote my "Veteran Presence" career task this week and it's felt like only a couple weeks since I was drafted to the VHLM. Glad you had a great time with the JST, and hope to work with you again soon!

[Shindigs 1,771]

Agreed to the part of how to interact with players as a GM. Even when you GM you really are still just another community member, obviously. But you're also in a position of seniority, and it creates a bit of a dynamic naturally for the most part. Though a lot of the time you might prefer it didn't.

 

It reminds me a bit about how freshers week felt in University, I actually started Uni a few years late. So I was older than our "supervisors" during freshers, who were really just 2nd and 3rd year students. But because they were our supervisors they "felt" older than me, and they felt more like "staff members" than what they actually were, just other students like me that I'd later just become friends with. I think that same dynamic applies to how a lot of people see league staff and their first GM. It's easy to kind of label them that way, when really they are just like you. But with more experience.

 

That can make it a bit harder to drive "normal conversation" in a LR as a GM, so usually you do rely on enough chatterbox players/alumni/hangarounds that you can just be part of the conversation, rather than the driving force in the conversation. It's no small part in why we almost universally value players with high LR activity so much in the VHLM draft. As well as why an active AGM can be big, cause even though they are somewhat part of that same problem of feeling like a player's "supervisor". It's not as pronounced as with your GM usually.

[Gaikoku-hito 1,990]

Well, You got me to click this with the JST (Japanese Standard time) so here I was think you had a nice summer vacation here in Japan so was interested in what your experience was like since the boarder here is very much closed to foreigners still. But my mistake.

 

[Aimee 1,074]

1 hour ago, Gaikoku-hito said:

Well, You got me to click this with the JST (Japanese Standard time) so here I was think you had a nice summer vacation here in Japan so was interested in what your experience was like since the boarder here is very much closed to foreigners still. But my mistake.

 

Sorry to disappoint. Hopefully you at least enjoyed the read.