“Everything I\u2019m not good at.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s how NBT intern Joey Lenkey \u201920 once referred to emotional intelligence (EQ) and the skills that\u00a0Jason Bridges \u201998 taught him during his internship on Nantucket Island last summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cEQ takes practice, practice, practice,\u201d says the former Little Giant point guard, who led bicycle tours of the island for Bridges’ Nantucket Bike Tours. \u201cLike shooting free throws in the gym, you have to practice talking to people or reading body language on a day-to-day basis to improve.\u201d<\/p>\n
New York Times<\/em> \u00a0science writer Daniel Goleman first defined\u00a0EQ as “a set of skills, including control of one\u2019s impulses, self-motivation, empathy, and social competence in interpersonal relationships.”<\/p>\n \u201cThese are the things that really matter in life but they\u2019re not taught at any school,” Bridges says. “Who do you want as a friend? What do you want in a spouse or in a co-worker? Nobody ever says, \u2018Man, if you only had a higher GPA then we could be friends.\u2019 You want trust, honesty, gratitude.”<\/p>\n Joey remembers the \u201cSix-in-One Challenge\u201d that called for him and SaVonne to express gratitude to people in six different ways\u2014a letter, a text, an email, a gift, a face-to-face encounter, and a post on social media.<\/p>\n \u201cYou had to tell the person what you\u2019re grateful for, but also why\u2014which meant you had to be sincere. I wrote a letter to my mom, and she cried. What you can do for people by sincerely giving gratitude is amazing. It\u2019s a superpower, really.\u201d<\/p>\n With two months to practice, the Wabash biology major got better at EQ.<\/p>\n \u201cJoey is rockin\u2019 this summer,\u201d Jason tweeted on National Intern Day. \u201cThe island has never experienced such a smile.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt seems like everything just clicked that last week,\u201d Joey says. \u201cWe\u2019re walking down the street saying hi to all these people we\u2019d gotten to know. I felt so connected, it was amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n He savors those connections and was determined to incorporate this new mindset into his life at Wabash.<\/p>\n \u201cJason warned us that it could be a difficult transition. But I want to share what we\u2019ve learned, build our own Nantucket community at Wabash. Wouldn\u2019t that be sweet?!\u201d<\/p>\n Back on campus Joey began volunteering at Half Way Home, a non-profit residential drug and alcohol treatment program for women. He drives the women to their appointments and began tutoring later in the fall.<\/p>\n \u201cI love using my people skills.\u201d He smiles. \u201cIt balances out those hours I spend doing organic chemistry.<\/p>\n \u201cAt Half Way Home, I hope I\u2019ll eventually be able to pass along some of what I learned about emotional intelligence too. Those skills would be helpful to the women as they look for jobs, in their daily lives, with all the challenges they face.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Everything I\u2019m not good at.\u201d That\u2019s how NBT intern Joey Lenkey \u201920 once referred to emotional intelligence (EQ) and the skills that\u00a0Jason Bridges \u201998 taught him during his internship on Nantucket Island […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":3965,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-works-in-progress"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2018\/01\/joey-1024x683.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3963"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3969,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3963\/revisions\/3969"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}