Campaign-In-A-Day Student Profile: Joshua Schutte

In 2016 American Majority held our first Campaign-In-A-Day event in July in Ohio with 70 students. Join us now in 2021 and we have trained over 2,000 students and adults through the Campaign-In-A-Day program. This profile series of blog posts are to highlight this summer’s attendees’ experiences with the event.

 

Name: Joshua Schutte

Where are you from: Dayton, OH

School or Occupation: I am a senior majoring in experimental psychology with a focus in industrial organizational psychology at Franciscan University of Steubenville. 

Campaign-In-A-Day Attended: Forge 2021

 

Campaign-In-A-Day taught me, first and foremost, what a campaign looks like, and how it can be effectively run. As someone who has never personally run a campaign, I found it incredibly informative through both the informational sessions and the practical experience in the simulation. The experience helped me to further learn what it means to work in a team and how important it is to have people you trust working with you. There were many times when an issue would come up that, instead of having to deal with it myself, I could trust someone else on my team to handle while I continued with my current job. 

 

During the event, I worked with my group both as a follower and a leader. There were moments that required me to step up and take control of a situation when appropriate, but possibly more importantly, I had to know when to be a good follower and perform my role in the team as requested. The entire time, we would be working in small groups within our team tackling different areas of the campaign, but we were always running things past each other before submitting it. Everyone had insightful comments and suggestions, and the entire time, people not only completed their own tasks, but also helped everyone else complete theirs. I never felt like anyone was slacking off, and in reality, it would have been felt because the team was small enough that it constantly depended on every member.   

 

Throughout Campaign-In-A-Day, I had to learn to trust my teammates with their campaign roles, which I had no control over. Going into the face-off session in front of the judges, I had no idea what my candidate or the campaign manager were going to say, and I had to trust their abilities. Of course, I had some knowledge of what was going to happen because we generally bounced ideas off of one another, but I had no control over their speeches or responses to questions. I finally got to the point where I realized that my job was done, and I needed to trust my teammates’ judgment and ability.

 

From this whirlwind experience, I want future attendees to know that they should jump right into the experience and not hold back. The more you throw yourself into the program, the more you will get out of it. It can be intimidating in many ways, but it is well worth it once you can get past that. Dive in, have fun, and don’t be afraid to make mistakes.