Best Posts in Thread: Helper Application from EllieEllie

Member Name EllieEllie

Additional In Game Names: Krashlabs11 (for like 2 months maybe)

How old are you? 21

Location: Leeds, England

Do you have Discord? Yes

How many hours per day do you play MeepCraft? (weekdays) 2-3

How many hours per day do you play MeepCraft? (weekends) 3+

Have you ever been staff on this or any other server? No

References: Please give IGN's oKling, draqq

When did you join Meepcraft? Either May/June/July of 2016, I can't remember when I joined as Krashlabs

Introduction: Hello, my name’s Ellie (never would have guessed, right?) and I’ve been playing on the server for around 7 months now. As you can see, I’m 21 (soon to be 22 on February 13th! However, try not to remind me; I feel old enough already ) and I’ve recently graduated university. I studied English Language and Literature and came out with a 2:1 honours degree from Hull University, Scarborough Campus. Living by the sea was pretty cool, but I do have a quiet vendetta against any and all seagulls because of it. If you’re thinking “a vendetta against seagulls?! Why would a seagull murder her family?!” I’m afraid it’s not that exciting, they stole my chips a lot.

Since leaving university, I’ve been taking some time out to learn new skills and apply for jobs. For instance, I know how to patch roofs, I taught myself to knit, I’ve been drawing more and trying to brush up on my writing (*Mario Kart) skills. I was employed by a telephone bank in October ‘16, so I have officially joined the working world and I hope to be there for quite some time until I’m ready to move on to something more degree oriented.

My hobbies include reading (an awful lot of reading), knitting, walking, going to the cinema, playing games (mostly minecraft, sims and Mario kart) and I’m hoping to get back into netball now I’m home again.
My current plans for the future are to save up enough from working so I can move out of my parents’ house and into my own.

Why should you be Helper? For the purposes of making this section easy to follow, concise and clear, I’m going to split it into sections.

Experience:

I have no experience of being staff on a minecraft server but I’d like to tell you all about some game/life experience that I feel can connect to the role and its requirements.

Firstly, I am part of a testing group for an appstore game called Highrise (it’s a bit like habbo hotel for those who haven’t heard of it), as well as being an in-game moderator for several high volume destinations and part of a virtual Helpdesk for newbie players. We test big, new updates for a couple of weeks before it’s due to be released officially. This means we have to be critical of the work being presented to us as well as praising things that perform well. Consequently, I am not afraid to point out weaknesses in operations or the level of how user friendly something is. If I see an issue with something, I will calculate the problem and suggest solutions; if I cannot think of a solution myself then I will present the problem to our group and we’ll work it out together. I’m a massive fan of constructive criticism, why criticise something and not suggest a workable solution or improvement? That isn’t helpful to anyone!

I mentioned above that I work for a telephone bank; my main duties are helping customers out with lost cheques, unrecognised debits/credits, self-certification tax residency forms and direct debits and standing orders, to name a few (and apparently I’ve recently been promoted to draqq’s personal savings adviser, but that’s neither here nor there). Thus, I’m helping customers often in very problematic situations. I feel it’s important to keep a calm head (even when it’s ridiculous amounts of money eg. £100,000+), to reassure the person you’re helping that you can find a solution, and if not, then you can find someone who will find a solution. I believe the main thing is to remain positive and remain supportive with team members and customers/players.

Characteristics and Beliefs:

One of the main reasons I brought my work up is because I am dealing with sensitive information entrusted to me by my employers and by the people I help every single day. If there is no trust in a partnership, then the partnership fails. It’s that simple. If a player can’t come to you in confidence with a problem that’s making them unhappy, then there is no point in being a Helper or other staff member. You need to be reliable, positive, trustworthy, up for some hard work when it’s required and you need to be mature enough to realise that sometimes things just aren’t going to work out the way you want them to. Realism is a trait I truly value. It is important to be upfront about something, to assess the whole of a situation and to realistically think what the best form of action is. I believe I have all of these qualities.

I’m quite a laid back person; I have my moments like everyone, though, I wouldn’t be human otherwise. Self-assessment is very important to me. If I’m not actively looking for ways to improve myself and work on my own characteristics and weaknesses and showing how to act in a mature and conscientious manner, then I feel it’s not prudent to comment on someone else’s if they’re acting negatively or with disregard for others’ feelings. I think hypocrisy is one of the major hold-backs when talking about improvements in someone’s actions and behaviour. If you warn someone for a distasteful joke and then make one later, why are you any better than them? Staff should uphold standards and be a rule abiding member of the community. (Obviously the last point is all hypothetical, I haven’t actually seen this happen).

I’m also going to make reference to my age; I feel a lot of players are younger than myself, so if I’ve been through something they’re going through (eg. Exams, school, applications, college and so forth), then if they’re wanting advice I will try my best to help out. I think there’s a lot of pressure in today’s society for young people being made to pick a job they want to do when they’re older and they’re still in school, barely starting out. Some are fine with that, I definitely wasn’t. I had no clue, and I still don’t, but that’s okay. I’ve met a lot of 30+ year olds who don’t know what they want to do! It’s important to reassure people that they don’t have to decide everything right that very second. I think this last point could relate to Meepcraft quite well, I think it would be valuable for everyone to have the mind-set that it’s a work in progress. It’s never going to be perfect, it’s never going to be everything some people want in a server, but we can do our very best to make sure it’s improving every day. Whether that be with the actual server or just general atmosphere for the players.

Work ethic:

I am not afraid of hard work or difficult situations. I work best when I’m under pressure and am very methodical in my processes. I do a lot of admin work with my job, meaning I have to be time efficient so that when I’m not on the phone, I’m actively keeping up to date with my paperwork. In doing that, I can leave at the end of the day feeling like I’ve done some valuable work.

I take a lot of pride in the things I do; this means I do my best no matter what, I want to feel that I can say I’ve done a good job. If I haven’t done a good job then I need to take a look at myself, work out what went wrong and improve so I can do better next time.

Inclusivity is something very important to me. It could be just a simple “welcome to the server” or helping to get someone started out to speaking to someone you’ve never spoken to before, playing with people whose friends aren’t usually on at that time and they’re bored. Or it could be seeing someone getting shut down in /g chat and sending them a message asking if they want to hang out or just being friendly. If we want to see the server grow, then we need to be seen as welcoming to new players and not displaying favouritism.

Involvement:

I hope many of you have seen me talking and helping out in /g chat; I realise I haven’t been here so long but I’m actively learning new things about the server every day and am becoming more confident in answering questions and speaking to all of you. If I haven’t spoken to you yet, then hello! I hope we’ll get to know each other soon and maybe play together sometime because I’d like that a lot. You can find me in the wild usually or just milling about in spawn doing some exploration and maybe playing a few minigames.

What are your weaknesses? I feel like I just want to stress in this section that everything mentioned here is a work in progress and I am actively working on improving my weaknesses.

I am rather insecure in the way that I doubt myself quite often; I know this isn’t something you want in a staff member but I am improving, you should’ve seen me when I was in high school, haha. I have trouble with being incredibly nervous before going into something but being absolutely fine when I’m actually doing it. This does hold me back in group discussions (especially vocal ones, I’m fine typing), so god help me if I get an interview for this. I think the main thing I’m trying to say is that I often build myself up to panic and think negatively even though I know I’ll be fine. Which can hinder me, but I am always pushing to get through it.

I’m also not particularly tech-savvy. Some things about computers and the actual downloading and crashing with minecraft are examples of things I probably would need to google the answer for. Most of the time, I would just advise to switch off and back on. However, I am learning; and it’s often from the younger players on minecraft, which is wonderful!

Because I work quite a bit in somewhat of a stressful job, I may not be available to log on quite so much on Mondays/Thursdays/Fridays/Sundays until late at night (and Thursdays probably not at all, as I work from 11:30-21:00gmt), by which time I am probably not concentrating as much as I could be. However, three days of the week I’m all yours, so I feel like I could make up for it there.

I am still getting used to the forums, so bear with me, I’m still learning but at the moment I’m a bit slow! I’m getting there, though.


Overall, I would absolutely love to be a member of Meepcraft’s staff team, I feel like we can all have a fresh start with the server reset and I’d love to be a part of that in helping players get used to everything again and welcoming back old and new faces. I know I could be a valuable member of the team and help in making Meepcraft an amazing server to play on. I just love the community we have here, I’ve never had a problem with anyone that I couldn’t sort out; like everyone, I have had my moments of frustration but this is what makes us human and I hope that we can all work together to pull ourselves back from the reset. If you see me in-game then please say hello, and let me know how your day is going, I’m always up for a chat.

Please give any other information you might think is useful for us to know: If you’d like me to elaborate on anything I have said, then please don’t hesitate to ask. All feedback is welcome Thank you for reading!

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 11, 2017, Original Post Date: Jan 11, 2017 ---

*only edited to correct a spelling mistake

 

..Now I have egg and chips. Is this the greatest day ever? I think so!

Thanks, that's really kind of you hope to see you around after the reset!

 

Absolutely! I knew the forums would come up as some feedback so I'm well prepared and trying to get myself out there more. Thanks for the awesome feedback!
I know, time zones make it difficult for me to get to know everyone but I think it'll get better when I'm more active on forums, then the people I don't see in game, I'll see on here even if there's hours between our replies!

I'm going to try and find a chest within five minutes when meep is back up! We should hunt together one time when we're both on thank you again, I really appreciate it

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 12, 2017, Original Post Date: Jan 12, 2017 ---

+Egg is the best response I could have ever hoped for. Have fun not being at work this evening while I have to slave away Hahaha thanks, dregg