Reputation

A place where I grew a strong reputation is at Wilmot Mountain.  It is a small ski resort in Wisconsin which was under 20 minutes away from my house.  I started skiing when I was 3 years old and got skilled at the sport by the time I was in middle school. I began to grow a reputation at the small ski resort by going there often in middle school and high school participating and doing well in different skiing competitions they hosted there.  Once I turned 16 and had my own car I begun to work at Wilmot doing a couple different jobs for them.  Because I had gone there so often growing up, once I started working there I felt less like the new guy because I already had a relationship with numerous employees which made the transition into my first job a lot easier.  My main job there was to teach young children ski lessons.  The lessons would be 45 minutes long where I would teach the child the fundamentals of skiing.  I only taught young children in the beginning because there are 3 levels of ski instructors (beginner, intermediate, expert) and I was only certified to instruct beginner lessons because you need more experience to teach intermediate and expert. I built a strong reputation at the mountain because at the end of every lesson the customer would give the instructor a rating on a scale of 1-5 and I had a very impressive overall rating for being the youngest ski instructor there.  Moving on to the next winter I worked there, I got certified to teach intermediate skiers too which broadened the amount of lessons I could teach.  The second winter I worked there we hired a lot of new employees which was nice for me because that meant there was ski instructors I finally had seniority over.  Seniority comes into play because you get to pick which lessons you want to teach for the day based on how long you have worked there.  So, with my good reputation and having seniority over new employees, I no longer had to teach lessons on days that it was very cold outside and could just send a younger instructor for the lesson.  However, this did not turn me into a lazy employee because I could teach more lessons than the winter before because I could teach both intermediate and beginner now and my instructor rating increased from the year before.  The manager was an old man that had worked there for years and someone I got to know as a young kid growing up there.  He actually taught me lessons when I was young so our relationship was very good before I started working there and only grew stronger with my strong work ethic. 

I also worked with a team to design the terrain park at Wilmot (where all the ski jumps are).  I was apart of this team because the terrain park was where I spent most of time on the mountain to learn how to do new tricks.  I built a strong reputation at the terrain park being able to land a number of different tricks which is why I was invited to be apart of the team that creates the terrain park.  By my senior year of high school, I got contacted by the US AirBag Tour which is a company that travels to ski resorts around the country with an inflatable stunt bag for skiers and snowboarders to learn new tricks on.  The tour went to Wilmot my senior year and they contacted me to come participate and to be apart of the promotional video they make.  I was offered this opportunity due to the reputation I built in our area as one of the better terrain park skiers.  This was a very cool experience because I got to ski with a lot of other talented skiers and it was beneficial to my skiing career because I learned how to do my first backflip while I was on the tour.