As a part of LAS we got the opportunity to go to the Connections Conference at Great Wolf Lodge in Traverse City, MI. Though LAS goes to the conference, it is open to anyone on Central’s campus that would like to go. When we got there the first night, we were introduced to the groups we would be working with over the course of the next two days and then were given free time to go to the waterpark! The next day, we woke up early and got right to business on learning new information about leadership. We were allowed to pick four different speakers we wanted to go to throughout Saturday. I chose “Branching Out: Netflix and No Chill”, “Leadership Through the Eyes of Disney”, “Growing your roots”, and “Friendship in Leadership.”
“Branching Out: Netflix and No Chill” was one of my favorites out of the sessions. It focused on disconnecting from social media and our technology in order to connect with others. We ended by doing an activity where we colored leaves based on how much we time we think we spend doing a certain activity. There were six different branches and the leaves pertained to whatever theme branch they were on. The six different branches were physical, spiritual, psychological, emotional, intellectual, and social. I loved this activity because it help me realize that sometimes I need to focus on my own health both mentally and physically a little more. This session focused a lot on not only connecting with others but connecting with yourself as well in order to keep yourself healthy.
“Leadership Through the Eyes of Disney” was really fun because I am a big Disney fan. We first began with naming our five favorite Disney characters and then choosing which one we thought we identified with the most. I chose Anna from Frozen because she is goofy and has a very optimistic look on the world. I feel like her personality matches mine pretty well. After that we picked our top 10 values that were eventually narrowed down to our number 1 value. Mine was Family because I am extremely close with my family, and I believe that the value of family includes friendship, love, and trust. After picking our value they had us think of the values of Disney character and see if the Disney character we chose would have the same value. I was so shocked that I had never made the connection before that the thing me and Anna have most in common would be our most important value. I liked the session a lot because something I hold very important in my life is my values, so I love whenever I get the opportunity to talk or think about them and what they mean to me.
“Growing your roots” is a session that dealt a lot with what you look for in a mentor, and what you need to be a successful mentor yourself. I chose this one because I know in a year I will be a mentor to my LAS mentee, and I want to be able to be the best mentor I can be for them! We spent a lot of time discussing who our role models are. I have a lot of very prevalent mentors in my life, so we discussed why they are our role models and what traits and things they do that help us in order for us to be able to understand what may work when we are mentors to others.
“Friendship in Leadership” was my other favorite out of the sessions. The session used Harry Potter to help teach us about healthy relationships and leadership. I love Harry Potter, so I knew I would enjoy this session when I picked it. We learned what is known as “Comfort in, Dump Out”. This basically shows us how to deal with tough situations and how they may be affecting us and others around us who are also dealing with the same situation. The picture below shows how you should deal with the situations. You should spend time comforting the people who are more inward on the circle, but you should only vent or explain your feelings of being hurt to people who are more outward of you on the circle. We then did role playing with the Harry Potter cha
racters where we were each assigned a character from the Goblet of Fire and were told to interact with each right after *SPOILER ALERT* Cedric is killed by Lord Voldemort! I was Cho Chang, so I could vent about how upset I was to everyone except for Amos(Cedric’s dad) and Harry. However, the only two people who could vent to me were Amos and Harry. This is more difficult in real life because it is harder to identify who is truly closer to a situation. The “Comfort in, Dump out” ideology is a very useful method with having healthy relationships and learning how to be a source of comfort for others.
I learned a lot about not only how to connect better with my cohort, but also to be able to connect to other organizations on campus. The things that I learned are things I can use in everyday life, especially the “comfort in, dump out” theory. I feel as if I am more able to be conscious of others feelings in a situation with that theory in mind. Overall, the Connections Conference was a blast, and I hope next year I can go back as a facilitator to help others enjoy the experience and learn as much as I did.
Ashleigh Varney 