Throughout my years as a leader, I have learned and experienced many things. I have developed and honed my skills as a leader. I’m aware I have many things left to learn and experience as I graduate school and start my journey into the workforce.
When it comes to values, I value five things, advancement, challenge, collaboration, friendship, and loyalty. Advancement to me is moving forward towards a goal and it helps create and meet small goals to further guide towards the main goal. Challenge to me is something that is more difficult than the rest and it helps build knowledge and endurance. Collaboration to me is working together towards a similar goal and it helps create more creativity. Friendship to me is a plutonic emotional connection and it helps build connections and comradery. And lastly, loyalty to me is having a full alliance with a person or group and it helps build trust.
I have had many experiences as a growing leader. Some positive and some negative. A positive leadership experience I’ve had was during my internship at a summer camp this past summer. When I first arrived at the camp I was greeted with many things to learn. I learned how to lifeguard, perform CPR, and how to address medical emergencies. Before camp started, I was assigned as an in-bunk councilor, this means I was living in the bunks with my own set of girls. During pre-camp as I was learning new skills to use at camp, I was pulled into the office. In this meeting, I was told I was ana client leader and everyone could see it. I was told I was getting a raise just after being there for two weeks and was given a higher position. I was the “lead” of Wilderness of Adventure and Discovery (WAD). I was basically a director and had the same tasks as one, but was paid less. However, I’ll take what I can get and gain experience. During the rest of the summer, I would sit with the other person from WAD and plan activities and field trips. I gained lots of knowledge through the things I did right and even more knowledge from the things I didn’t do quite right. A negative leadership experience I had was in high school. All through high school, I did color guard. In my junior year, I was given the position of captain. This was exciting and allowed me to start working on my leadership skills. During this time, I lead my team through the fall semester and even lead them through their other captain not showing up for the final competition. After she left, I was the only captain. During the winter season, we had four captains, which was weird and suspicious. It led to conflict and too many chefs in the kitchen. When it came time to select leadership for the next fall season, I was sure to get the same position due to my previous experience. I was not elected captain. I was pulled into the office and was asked about bullying. I was confused since I hadn’t bullied anyone and that I wasn’t approached about this sooner before leadership was decided. This was suspicious. I didn’t get along with one of the members of the guard and we would bicker, but it was in good spirit, and we are still friends to this day. I later put things together and figured out it was all nepotism. The two people who were selected as captains had parents in high leadership on the band’s board. The worst part was that I was barred from saying anything during practice to help the guard since I wasn’t leadership. I was yelled at many times for trying to make the guard look better. It was very discouraging and frustrating to see all my knowledge being thrown away, ignored, and punished. It was also frustrating to see the leadership sitting on the sideline, not working on the show because they were “tired”. I was putting in ten times the work they were. This experience has stuck with me forever and still makes me angry to this day. But I take this anger and put it towards being a better leader every day.
Leadership to me is the act of guiding a group of individuals with different skill sets, ways of thinking, background, etc. to a common goal. I came to understand leadership and its definition through the many classes and experiences I’ve had at Virginia Tech. I was once in the Corps of Cadets and was shown different levels of leadership. During my classes, I learned many skills and ways to be a leader. I even got to use these skills with my peers during projects. Many people have influenced my definition of leadership. Most of them were professors at Virginia Tech. Dr. Rateau, Dr. Walz, and Dr. Council have taught me many of the things I know about leadership today. Each of their classes has taught me new skills and given me lots of experience.
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