Detroit Service Trip LEAD team, try number 2

My freshman year, my cohort of LAS went on a service trip to Detroit where we received education about Detroit and served the community. This year I was on the LEAD team for the Detroit Service Trip for the freshman cohort of LAS. This meant I was able to participate in the experience and facilitate reflections with a small group of students. This experience had some differences from my freshman year, and I have grown a lot and am different too. It is because of these differences that I was able to learn so much and be impacted so heavily by the experience.

One of the biggest things that I took away this time was how aware I was of the gentrification that is occurring in Detroit. On the first day of the trip, we spent some time with Quicken Loans and took a historic tour of Detroit. During the tour, we learned about the housing barriers that have been placed on people of color and the systemic racism that has driven many decisions that have been made in the city. Decisions that were made not that long ago, have had immense effects on communities of color. After the day, I was eager to get into reflection because of the impact the tour. It was fulfilling to hear and see students response to the tour and the amount they learned. They were able to connect the dots in how power and privilege can lead to groups being oppressed. The next day we served with CASS. The group I was with worked on recycling paper. I helped sort paper before it went to be shredded.

This experience was an amazing one that gave me the opportunity to help members of the freshman cohort reflect and grow from their experience, and it gave me the opportunity to learn and grow myself.

Leadership Safari for Leadership Development

I have been involved in the Leadership Safari program heavily throughout my time at CMU. It has given the the opportunity to develop into the leader I am today, and it has opened my eyes into new experiences and involvements I would not have had without it. This year, after my second Fall Leadership Safari and my experience as a Spring Leadership Safari last year, I was able to be the Spring Leadership Safari Staff Assistant. In this role, I was able to plan the conference for incoming transfer students and second semester freshman. I did this through programming elements of the conference, working with campus partners to build a service project, and utilizing campus partnerships in different offices to recruit students for the program. This was only the second year of Spring Leadership Safari, and my GA, Haley Anderson, and I were determined to make it a great experience for the students.

 I have grew through this experience in ways that I did not imagine the role as a Staff Assistant would bring me.  I developed my own sense of authentic leadership, and furthered my discovery of what being a leader means to me. One of the best things being a Staff Assistant for Safari gave me was working with Haley. Through my relationship with Haley, I have truly learned what mentorship looks and feels like. Haley was always there for me as a human, a student, and a leader on the campus. She sought my opinion and insight on elements of the program, and she guided me on things I had no previous knowledge of. I was able to receive incredible amounts of professional development, and I gained a resource to help as I anticipate through the journey of post-grad life as well. She has given me incredible support in things that have occurred in my life this past year, and she helped me learn how to use my values and heart in my leadership. Now that my role in Safari is done, I no longer consider Haley my GA, but a good friend. I could not replace my relationship with Haley and the support and guidance she has given me for anything.

Through the development of my leadership, I learned how important it is to be critical of the programs and institutions you are a part of in order to make change. Through my high leadership role, I saw not only the incredible parts of the program, but also the parts that I thought could improve for the well being of the student leaders involved. I was able to see things through a lens, and use my voice to try and make change for the future in this program and campus. This position brought me a lot of stress, but I am grateful for the experience because I would not be the leader I am today without it.

As I enter my senior year, my journey will the Leadership Safari program is done. I look back on my safari memories with joy, but I have realized that sometimes things help you grow to a limit. Once you have experienced the growth you can in a program, it is time to move on to things that can further your growth beyond what staying with where you are comfortable can. I look forward to the growth I will experience, and I look forward to using the skills that the Leadership Safari program has given me.

Talk the Leadership Talk

Another class I took this year with my LAS cohort was Communication in Leadership.  A lot of the topics covered in this class are similar to the topics covered in my LDR 200 class I took freshman year.  However, being a year older I believe helped me understand and takeaway the material a little differently than before

The first assignment in this class is telling a story about a time you failed as a leader.  I was shocked when I heard this was our first assignment.  This is not something we are asked, and I was genuinely curious to hear all of these people who I consider strong leaders around me talk about a time they failed.  Most people told stories of times they were in high school.  This contrasted with our last assignment which was to tell a story of a time we implemented a topic from the course and were successful as a leader.  Most people told these stories from a time that was extremely recent.  I loved hearing this because it showed the growth in the each person because they were growing so much as leaders in as short of a time as from high school to college.

My favorite lesson from this class was talking about the types of ethical challenges in leadership.  I felt it was extremely applicable to the leadership roles I have now, and that I will have in the future, including my future career.  I think it is also arguably one of the most important because in order to be a strong leader, you have to be ethical. This is definitely one of my biggest lessons learned from this class.

Morality

One of the classes we are required to take for LAS protocol is a philosophy class taught by the one and only Gary Fuller.  I can honestly say this is one of my favorite classes I have taken so far at CMU.  Gary Fuller walks into the classroom with an unmatched personality and energy that creates an atmosphere that I do not think anyone in my cohort was prepared for.  Gary also has a deep amount of appreciation and respect for his students.  I still see Gary on campus outside of the classroom, and we have a full conversation every time.  He is a professor who genuinely cares about his students, and he even throws us a Christmas party at the end of the semester.

Aside from the professor, I loved this class because of the way it made me think.  This class added not only the question of if something was morally okay or not, but also why something was moral or not.  I have always been a person who was very strong in beliefs, and I am willing to vocalize them.  I was constantly being challenged in this class to be able to defend my beliefs and whether or not they are moral.  This class touched on a lot of topics that made people angry.  The topics paired with the 8ams caused for a large chunk of the class to often become disengaged.  This added even more to my overall takeaway from the class.

You cannot make people care.  I may believe something is or is not morally okay.  Someone else may believe differently.  We may have our reasons and that is where debate begins and change happens.  However, if people don’t have an opinion, no one is challenged.  There is a lack of growth, and there is a lack of change.  Discovering how actions and ideas line up with your values is essential to being a leader because it allows you to have the important conversations and to make a difference.

Learning to Lead

As an LAS cohort (plus one leader who is not a part of LAS) we take a class together called LDR 200L.  This class is a leadership class where we learn important skills needed to improve our leadership abilities. Throughout the class we had to facilitate different activities and learn about the different leadership theories.  Though there were multiple leadership theories that were applicable to my life, the one I found the most applicable was the Behavioral Approach to leadership.

A lot of time in leadership people focus a lot on the relationship between the leader and the followers.  Don’t be me wrong this is an EXTREMELY vital part of leadership, however I like how this theory focus a lot on how leaders can be a mixture of being very task-oriented and relationship oriented.  I consider myself to be a very personable person, however, when things are not getting finished or are left until the last minute I get pretty anxious, which will affect the people around me to become anxious as well.  I think knowing how to balance task and relationships is one of the most important parts of being a great leader.

I am going to be a guide for Leadership Safari this fall, so when I was learning the theories in LDR I would try to put them into context of how I can use my knowledge while leading a small group.  Behavioral approach was one of the most easily applicable in this scenario too because of the amount of activities that are fit in to such a short amount of time during Leadership Safari.  However, in order to make Leadership Safari an amazing experience for the participants, I will need to form fun and trusting relationships with them.  LDR 200 has made me feel much more comfortable with my leading abilities, and it also taught me that I have A LOT more room for growth; that’s a good thing!

I also learned a lot about how to debrief.  Going through LDR has taught me that debriefing is the most important part of leading an activity.  It is the part that connects all the dots and allows participants to see the bigger picture of what they are doing.  Debriefing allows the leader of the activity to learn as well and see a new a view point on things that could have not seen before.

A lot of people didn’t like going to LDR because it was three hour long evening class, but I can honestly say that I always looked forward to it because learning about things that were so applicable to our lives was SO FUN!

Repeating History

Another class that we take for our LAS protocol is an American History class.  I had already take AP US History is high school and passed the exam, but since my scholarship required it, I had to take this class again.  I already knew a lot of the information, but this class forced me to look at the history of the United States through a different lens.

In this class we had to do book reviews about leaders in American History.  My first book review was about Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  I picked her to write my report because I knew it would be something that interests me because of my passion for feminism.  Through learning about this person and their life as an activist, I learned a lot about what makes a powerful and successful leader.  I large part of why Elizabeth Cady Stanton is so successful is because she had the ability to adapt to whoever she was around to help fit their needs.  She was a smart leader because she knew how to motivate a crowd.  She would go to any end to fight for what she wanted.  I also learned a lot about the start of feminism in the 19th Century.  This was interesting to me because how feminism has changed since then is drastic.

 My second book review I focused on medical researcher Jonas Salk.  I am pre-med, so I wanted a chance to research someone who has had such a large impact on my field.  It was through this project that I learned about how self-serving leadership can cause a person to lose themselves.  A large part of why Salk fought so hard to become successful was because he wanted to be loved and adored by the scientific community, however, finding the cure caused him to become an outcast in the scientific community due to jealousy.  This caused him to eventually allow himself to deteriorate and lose things that were important to him.

Though I already knew a lot about American History, the class has probably been the class this year that has taught me the most about leadership.  It is from the research I have done that I can say what kind of leader I want to be, and what aspects about leadership can help make you a successful leader.  I have found that Elizabeth Cady Stanton is one my biggest role models, and I strive to have her type of leadership.  From this class I now know that a large part of leadership is your ability to read your followers.  However, this doesn’t have to make you lose what your fighting for.

 

Choosing Civility

In our leadership class for LAS, our cohort was split into 6 groups that all read a different book and then presented how their book applied to leadership to the class.  My group was assigned the book Choosing Civility.  This book focused on the 25 rules of how to be civil.  The three rules that I had the responsibility of presenting about were “Refrain from Idle Complaining”, “Accept and Give Constructive Criticism”, and “Don’t Shift Responsibility and Blame.”

The first rule, “Refrain from Idle Complaining”, is the rule that I decided was the one that I needed to improve on the most in my life.  As leaders, we have a large influence on the people’s lives around us.  Everyone’s attitudes are contagious, so why not do our best to make everyone around us happier?  The main point of this is that we spend so much of our daily lives focusing on the little things go wrong…”the line was so long today at the store”,”ugh I don’t want to go to class”, “It is so cold outside today.”  These little negative things may not seem like a big deal at the time, but these complaints add up and create a negative atmosphere around us.  Instead, try to focus on the positives in life and you will make not only yourself, but also everyone around you happier.

“Control the controllables”

The second rule, “Accept and Give Constructive Criticism”, is a life lesson that I think is very valuable.  My volleyball coach in high school focused heavily on this during our practices.  Instead of saying what we shouldn’t do( ex. “Don’t miss this next serve”), she had us verbally say out loud to each other what we WILL do(ex. “I will make my next serve”).  This constructive criticism that we gave ourselves and others allowed us to improve because we focused on improving what we were doing in a positive way.

The last rule, “Don’t Shift Responsibility and Blame”, applies a lot to my core value of integrity.  By not shifting responsibility and blame, you are being accountable for you actions.  In leadership and in life, it is important to admit that you have made mistakes.  This allows you to grow and learn from your mistakes rather than run form them.

The book also mentions the steps to take in order to implement these rules into your life.  It says to focus on one rule at a time, and day by day increase how much you practice the rule in your life.  For example, if you wanted to focus on the rule “Refrain from Idle Complaints” you would focus everyday on slowly saying less complaints and instead making positive remarks.  This is the rule that I plan on focusing on first.  I know that there are a lot of days when I spend way too much time complaining.  Part of this is because I like to talk a lot, and when I don’t have much to say, I fill the empty space with little complaints, such as “I’m tired” or “I don’t want to do this.”  This is a really bad habit of mine but I think if I can cut it out, I will be allowing myself to be much more positive and spread positivity to others.

My group decided to implement these rules by passing out nice cards to people on campus that say nice things and motivate people to do their best!  Overall, I think this project allowed me to see how much little things we do can affect others.  It has made me more conscious of my day to day actions.

Why are we like this?

Another class we have to take for LAS is Intro to Psychology.  I absolutely loved the material that we learned in this class, and it has made me want to minor in Psychology.  I think learning about why people are the way the are is so interesting.  We also learned about how the brain works, and that fascinated me. The human mind and brain is so cool.  I think learning about how we develop and how the mind works allows us to have a greater understanding of others. We also talked a lot about how psychology can affect leadership.  We learned a lot about social psychology, and I think that is extremely applicable to being the leader in a group of people.

I think this class is the class that will benefit my leadership skills the most.  It helped me really understand the driving force of why we react to things the way we do, and why we have the personalities that we do.  Knowing this can make me more aware as a leader, and make me able to relate and understand more people. Also, our professor, Dr. Matthew Prewett, was one of my favorite professors I had this semester. I think he is part of the reason that I enjoyed the material so much!

This class also gave my LAS cohort the opportunity to bond!  We went through a lot of material for the class pretty quickly, so we all relied on each other to help study and learn the material.

My First Step to Becoming the President

Part of our protocol for LAS is taking Introduction to Debate together as a cohort.  We learn the different ways of argumentation and are then asked to debate about topics that assigned to us with groups that we are assigned at the beginning of the semester.  At first I wasn’t too excited about this class because I didn’t know what to expect because I had never formally debated before.  However, I ended up enjoying the debating aspect of the class.

The first two debates we were not allowed to pick our topics.  My group was assigned the topics “All welfare recipients should be drug tested” and “All schools should be single sex schools.”  However, the last debate we were allowed to choose our debate topic.  My group chose the topic “Religion should be taught in schools.”  The last debate was my favorite because I thought it was the most interesting.

This class really helped develop my leadership because it allowed me to learn how to have a productive conversation about an issue even when I disagree with others.  I think this is an important skill to have as not only a leader, but as a person.  I also loved this class because the majority of the class would all go get lunch together afterwards, so it gave us a really great chance to bond!