Whenever a Collegewise counselor comes across news, a helpful website, or other information she finds useful, we send it to each other in an email with the subject line, “Take it or leave it” (“TIOLI” for short).
Originally Arun’s brainchild, the idea was that whenever one of us came across anything small or big that made our counseling lives a little easier, we’d share it in a “Take it or leave it” email. TIOLIs remove email pressure. If I find something interesting, I can share it with impunity. If you like what I’m sending, great–“take it” and use it. If you don’t find it interesting, “leave it” and delete it. No hard feelings…for either of us.
Here’s an example.
Katie went to an Ursinus College info session yesterday. She came back, did a quick write up about what she learned, and sent us all an email entitled “TIOLI: Ursinus College.” Now I know that 90% of Ursinus pre-med students with a 3.3 GPA or above get into medical school. I’ll take it, Katie. Thank you!
Other TIOLIs have shared everything from how we can use our work email (through Google Apps) to send text messages to our students, to an article about how to make your Outlook function better, to “The Dirty Thirty” most common grammatical mistakes, to how to handle the question when a prospect asks how we’re different from the competition.
The most useful part of the TIOLI is that all of our counselors have it at their disposal. It’s a tool we all use, and it makes it that much easier to share information with each other. It’s so easy to do. Ask your colleagues if they’d like to try TIOLIs. Maybe kick it off with a good take-it-or-leave-it of your own?
So there you go–take it or leave it.