Seasons of Service

Throughout my time at CMU, one of my favorite things I have been involved in is the Alternative Breaks Program (AB). The AB program provides students with issue education, service, and reflection with social justice issues through weekend and weeklong breaks that travel to different communities and assist them with whatever the community says they need. We are there to serve the communities.

When thinking about what the AB program means to me the one word I can use to describe it is community. The community comes from both the service we do with our community partners and the people that you meet.  The people that I have met through this program have become some of my best friends and support systems. The support doesn’t stop with just things occurring within the AB program but has brought me people and support that stretches outside of the AB web. I have gotten so much support in trying to figure out my professional goals and what I want to do with my life while also supporting any personal struggles I have faced while at CMU.  One of my friendships from AB, Shannon Dent, and I even made a remix to the song “Seasons of Love” about how much we love AB and Board. I wouldn’t trade our Thursday evening meetings for anything. These friendships all developed because of the sense of community and the conversations that Alternative Breaks starts. You are surrounded by people who have similar values to you and genuinely care about the people around them. Through office hours, long van rides, and service you gain the opportunity to be completely yourself and be extremely goofy at times and incredibly intentional at others. When going through an experience of growth with other people you create a bond with them that sparks that friendship and support, and I cannot imagine my time at CMU without the community that AB has helped build. It is because of the growth and community that the Alternative Breaks program has given me that I applied to be a part of the Alternative Breaks Advisory Board. This year, I was able to serve as a Site and Service Development Chair  (SSD) and a Site Leader and Orientation Chair (SLOT).

Through my involvement with Alternative Breaks this year I grew an immense amount in my knowledge of both the program and social justice. As an SSD I was given the task of planning the weeklong service experiences. This meant finding service and housing, writing Site Agreements, receiving Insurance from community partners, and making loads upon loads of phone calls. One of my favorite aspects of Alternative Breaks is the community partners we work with. I love being able to interact with them and learn from them. On all of my AB experiences I have been able to form connections and learn about different ways people are working toward social justice. As a Winter SSD during first semester, I had the opportunity to learn more about the community partners we work with beyond the scope of the ABs I have participated on and connect with them.

This year I also had an opportunity to experience the work that SLOT does.  SLOTs role is to train and prepare site leaders to lead their weeklong and weekend service experiences. This included writing trainings, writing weekly newsletters, and presenting trainings to site leaders. I was able to learn how important the role is to support site leaders and help them feel prepared to site lead their Alternative Break. I know for me through my site leading experience the time leading up to the break can be stressful, and I know I felt inadequate within my role at times. I utilized SLOT at those times and was able to have a resource to help me feel prepared. I was grateful to be able to use my experience to help prepare site leaders to have a successful, intentional, and growing experience while on their AB.

This program has helped me realize how strong my passion for social justice is, and it has helped me better understand the intersectionality of social justice issues and the importance of being an active citizen. I am extremely excited to complete my final year at CMU as a member of the AB Board as a returning SSD, and I am excited to continue to connect with community partners.

 

Veggie life, part 2

Last year, I joined Student Advocate for Vegan/Vegetarianism because I had just begun my journey as a vegetarian. I had started restricting meat from my diet due to hearing about the health benefits of being vegetarian.  I joined the Student Advocates for Vegan/Vegetarianism (SAVV) because I wanted to learn more about not only why I should be vegetarian, but also better tips and tricks to making food while vegetarian that I did not know.

Throughout my second year as a member of SAVV my love for being vegetarian and knowledge of how the meat industry negatively impacts our environment has grown immensely.  Every meeting I learn more about how making a small change in my daily life, I am able to impact the world on a larger scale.  Not only do I have the opportunity to learn inefficient meat production is, but also how harmful meat production is to the environment.  The amount of chemicals that are pumped into meat to make it taste better and last longer in storage are harmful to the environment, and these chemicals are taking the nutrients that are meant to be “good” for our body away.  Also,  the way animals that are raised for meat production is cruel. My biggest takeaway from my second year as a member of SAVV is that there are additional ways that I can be conscious of the environment while being vegetarian, such as limiting my amount of food and plastic waste. Often foods that are convenient to buy as a vegetarian are packaged in insane amounts of plastic that are harmful to the environment. Additionally, when buying fruits and veggies it is not difficult to not eat them before they go bad. I learned ways to better manage my food waste and limit my plastic use as well. I also have become more aware of how where I spend my money is impacting the environment as well. If I am buying and giving money to companies that are harmful to the environment, there will not be change. It has given the knowledge and power to vote with my dollar!

SAVV has given me the opportunity to constantly learn and become more conscious of how the way things are sold, not just what is being sold, matters too. I am grateful for my growth into a conscious consumer.

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.

Animals are Friends, not Food

For the past year I have been vegetarian.  I started restricting meat from my diet due to hearing about the health benefits of being vegetarian.  I joined the Student Advocates for Vegan/Vegetarianism (SAVV) because I wanted to learn more about not only why I should be vegetarian, but also better tips and tricks to making food while vegetarian that I did not know.

Throughout my year as a member of SAVV my love for being vegetarian has grown immensely.  Every meeting I learn more about why I should not eat meat.  The biggest take away I have learned from this experience is how inefficient meat production is, and how harmful meat production is to the environment.  The amount of chemicals that are pumped into meat to make it taste better and last longer in storage are harmful to the environment, and these chemicals are taking the nutrients that are meant to be “good” for our body away.  Also,  the way animals that are raised for meat production is cruel.

SAVV is an involvement I plan on staying involved in because I am constantly learning more and becoming more passionate about the topic of eating a plant-based diet.  I plan on being vegetarian the rest of my life, and this involvement has encouraged me to pursue being vegan at some point.

 

 

“It made a difference to that one”

This summer I had the privilege of going on an Alternative Summer Break through CMU. Alternative Breaks (AB) work by having students sign up to work for a cause they are passionate about, not knowing where they are going or what they will doing.  12 students go on each break, and they meet weekly to become educated on the issue they are going to be working with.  A couple weeks after signing up, the group figures out what service they will be doing and where they will be going for their week of service.

Ever since I was little I have had this crazy amount of love for animals.  Since coming to college I have also become very passionate about the environment and saving the earth we live on.  So, I signed up for the break that deals with the issue of Animal Endangerment.  We found out that we were going to be traveling to Palm Beach, FL to help baby sea turtles find their way to the ocean, and yes, it is as perfect as it sounds.

So, me and twelve girls packed into two mini vans and drove to Palm Beach.  The first day there we spent time getting to know the area and visiting the GORGEOUS beach that we were going to be doing some of our service on.  We make our own meals throughout our week, so we went grocery shopping and set up at the Faith Lutheran church we were staying at.

Throughout the week we spent long days doing service.  We arrived at the beach at 6 A.M. every morning to work with the  Sea Turtle Conservation League of Singer Island.  We worked with this woman Debbie, who started the Sea Turtle program on Singer Island herself.  Debbie is a woman who, though I only spent a week with her, she has made a huge impact on my life.  Everything Debbie says inspires the people around her to do whatever they are passionate about.  She has had numerous jobs throughout the years and all of them were because she felt a pull to them at that time because it was her passion.  She said “I would get these brainstorms of what I wanted to do, and I had to do it.” She started the Sea Turtle program after already having children and having a career.  She wanted to save the turtles, and so she did just that.  Debbie does all of this program solely based on volunteering.  She and her volunteers, and us for the week we were there, spend 4 hours every morning walking the beach, helping baby sea turtles find their way to the ocean, excavating old sea turtle nests, marking new sea turtle nests, and documenting hatched nests.

After working in the mornings with Debbie, we would head over to the Loggerhead Marine Life Center to volunteer with them.  Loggerhead is a sea turtle rehabilitation center that helps rescue turtles of any age and nurse them back to health, to have them later released back into the ocean.  Loggerhead was the most amazing place I have visited to see animals.  They don’t treat the turtles any different than how a patient at a rehabilitation center that was a human would be treated.  When volunteering with Loggerhead, we did any type of work that they needed help with,  the majority of this being painting the pier they own.  We also helped them with yard work stuff in the front of the building.  Even though we were not directly working with the turtles at this point,  there is still so much reward to be gained from doing indirect service.

Our last service trip stop of the day was to MacArthur State Park.  While working at MacArthur State Park, we helped remove invasive species, trim trails, and clean up trash from trails.  This service was probably the service that was the most difficult for my group simply because we were usually doing service here at the peak heat of the day in long pants and shirt in the middle of August.  However, this work was work that really helped fire up my love for the environment.  Seeing all of the trash that is left around is heartbreaking, and so being able to help contribute to making the world a cleaner place was the ultimate win.

This trip taught me more than I could ever imagine.  Sea Turtles are endangered and only 1 in 10,000 sea turtles make it to adulthood.  Most nests have around 100 turtle hatchlings in them.  This means that a lot of nests are overall unsuccessful.  I saw a lot of nests that not a lot of the sea turtles made it to the surface of the sand alive because they get fried in the sand as a result of rising temperatures.   When sea turtles do make it out the sand, many do not make it to the water because of the amount of light that is on from buildings, hotels, and condos that lead them in the wrong direction. A lot of sea turtles are harmed once they get in the ocean because of the amount of trash that is left in the ocean. Overall, I just learned how much of an impact our everyday actions can impact the animals around us.  Even though so many sea turtles don’t make it to adulthood, and we can only help so many in a week, it is important to remember that we may not have saved all the turtles, but we were able to help some. Any is better than none.

A few things that I have started changing about my everyday life to lessen my carbon footprint and help support the environment:

• I was already a vegetarian before this trip, but this AB has reiterated my reasons for doing so
• I no longer use plastic grocery bags
• I limit my use of plastic straws
• I do not drink out of plastic water bottles

My AB was one of the best weeks of my life because of the work I got to do, and the people I got to connect with.  You can bet I will go on another Alternative Break this winter.

 

 

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.

 

How Detroit Helped Make a Difference to us

LAS in the D was filled with all sorts of activities you can read about here.  However, I did not anticipate the amount of emotion I would feel on and after this trip.  In such a short amount of time I had my eyes opened tremendously to new experiences and amazing leaders.

Being around so many leaders, it is hard to pick one that I would say had the largest influence on me.  One of the qualities that we have talked about a lot in my leadership class and that I noticed in all of the leaders I encountered in Detroit was they all had a why.  Everyone had such drive and passion for what they were doing, even if it was what seemed like an almost impossible task.  I’m sure it was once considered ridiculous to believe that one company could have such a large impact on rebuilding Detroit, but Quicken Loans is doing just that.  I want to use my love for learning and others to help use my passions to make a change.  I want to make someone’s life better.  As cliche as it may seem, this trip kind of made me really realize that anything is possible if you really care.  You can say all you want what kind of place you want the world to be, but it isn’t gonna change until you do something about it.

This whole outlook isn’t a new one.  You hear all the time that nothing is impossible, and you should be the change you wanna see in the world, but sometimes you need a reminder to inspire you to live your life through those mottos or cliches.  I am going to start by taking a chance and doing something I would never think of doing.  This trip has changed my whole outlook on Detroit, and I wanna live there for a summer and help be a part of the change.  Next summer I plan on applying for an internship with Quicken Loans to help with their Non-profit organizations and really get a taste of what it is like in Detroit.

The leaders on this trip will not all people who were Vice President’s of large companies or people who created a new company out of an idea.  Some of the most influential leaders on this trip were students from the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy and my fellow LASers.  As I mentioned in a previous post, the students at Jalen Rose were so positive the whole time.  The same can be said about my LAS cohort.  It was a very busy half a weekend, and my cohort did not complain at all.  Everyone was so willing to learn and to experience.  We all wanted to do more.

This trip really nailed down for me something that I already felt fairly passionate about.  It showed me how important learning is.  Learning about Detroit opened up a whole new view point on the city for me.  I think this is something so valuable that can be related to any part of life.  Any cruelty comes from ignorance.  By informing myself of other places and cultures I will easily become a more inclusive and open person.

All in all, this trip has inspired me to learn, and always have a fire for what I am doing. As Ma always say “If something is worth doing, it is worth doing right.”

Besides learning about what kind of leader I want to be, this trip made me fall in love with Detroit.  It is so underrated.  I think the media has such a large role in this.  Going to the city made me realize how media and marketing can play such a large role in the perception of a place or a person.  When you think of the things that are paired with an extremely popular city, such as New York City, you think of the tourist shirts that say “I

Also, there was a post on twitter the other day that after this trip made me very happy because it showed how the world is starting to see how great Detroit is too.

How We Made a Difference in Detroit

The “LAS in the D” trip was an action packed 30 hours that was filled with tons of excitement.  My entire LAS cohort packed onto a bus and headed towards Detroit with lots of enthusiasm and not really knowing what to expect.  Little did we know that this short trip was going to be one to remember.

Our first stop was to the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy.   While at the academy we were
split into different groups that had two LAS in the D Lead team members, five LAS students, and students from the academy.  We got a chance to spend a few hours at the JLRA and facilitate leadership activities with students. Being around these kids was such a fun experience because they each had such different personalities, but they were still there to learn about leadership.  Each of the students we worked with were so positive in whatever we were doing.  One of the activities we were doing involved using long string attached to a piece of plastic that is holding a kickball to move the kickball across the room.  Having done this activity before and knowing how frustrating it can be, I expected to see the students get kind of frustrated.  However, they were extremely positive and were constantly trying to think of better ways to accomplish the task.  This was one of my favorite parts of the day because it made me do a lot of self-reflection because I know often I get annoyed with doing small tasks like that and focus on the frustrations, but they all made it seem so much easier if they just kept a positive attitude.

There was a girl who joined our group a little later after we had already done our introductions, and you could tell she kind of felt out of place.  Throughout the activities she participated and gave full effort in the activities but she remained  pretty quiet throughout the entirety of the day until the end of our time at Jalen Rose.  Before we left, all of the groups met together in their gym and were discussing some of the things throughout the day.  The girl was one of the first students to stand up and share her opinions and reflect on how the day went.  Though I had only  met her a few hours before, I felt so proud that she had stood up and talked.  Since she had been quiet the majority of the day, I didn’t expect her to get up and share how the day had impacted her, and it showed to me how large of an impact we were having at the academy even after only being there a few short hours.

After leaving Jalen Rose, we ventured into the city.  As we drove into downtown Detroit, I watched out the bus window and slowly had this feeling of extreme excitement race through me.  Though I had a ton of fun at Jalen Rose, I was so excited to the see the city I had heard so much about but never experienced.  I love cities, and as soon as I started seeing the tall buildings and busy streets I couldn’t contain my excitement. We arrived at Quicken Loans and we ate some of the BEST pizza.  I never really knew much about Quicken Loans and expected them to be some boring business company.  However, when you walk into their offices, you learn they are anything but boring.  Their offices are fun and bright.  We listened to their Vice President, John Fikany, talk about Quicken Loans  and I was instantly inspired.  Hearing what he had to say about wanting to help rebuild Detroit.  They knew why they were doing what they were doing, and they had so much passion.  We got to tour Quicken Loans, and I was fascinated with what they were doing.  Each space was so different and so innovative.  Seeing Quicken Loans really made me think about what I was doing with my time and my life.  I know what I want to do, but seeing Quicken Loans help Detroit made me realize I can do so much with what I care about as long as I have a passion.  If you care about something, it is easy to put in the effort to make a difference.  John Fikany wasn’t doing this for money or for status, he was working at Quicken Loans to make the city a better place.  I can honestly say that touring Quicken Loans has motivated me more than any other experience has.

After leaving Quicken Loans, my fellow LASers and I got a chance to visit the Detroit Institute of Art.  I love art museums because they are such an insightful way to view culture.  I walked through the DIA trying to see as much as possible because I had never visited before.  My favorite piece of art was found in the Modern Art section.  It was named “Autobiography: Air/CS560”  It was super cool because it was made of different phrases that combined to represent the inhumanity of man, and it focused a lot on societal issues in the world today.  I thought that was pretty interesting.

We then got the chance to have a big slumber party in the DNR’s Outdoor Adventure Center.  My whole cohort took this opportunity to act like little kids and play sardines!  It was super fun exploring the Outdoor Adventure Center and learn how they were making a difference.  My favorite part of the Outdoor Adventure Center was that they had a poster board that had their “why” on it.  They had the golden circle picture from the Ted Talk on leadership, and then multiple people involved in the Outdoor Adventure Center had their own why statement on the board.  It kind of made me realize that leadership truly does go full circle.

Saturday morning we woke up bright and early prepared for a full day of service.  We headed over to a Detroit-based agency called CASS, where we were split into four groups to do different service.  One group helped prepare food, another made doormats out of illegally dumped tires, and another helped sort donated clothing.  My group got to head over to a separate warehouse where we got to work with recycled paper and cardboard from other companies.  We shredded the paper and put it into what was like a hay bale made of paper.  I also helped clean their bathrooms.  It was so cool because in the middle of this super busy warehouse was this big sign that said “Fighting Poverty. Creating Opportunity.”  We got to learn about the history of CASS and all that they do, and I didn’t want to leave.  I felt like I could have helped so much more if we could have just stayed longer.  The people at CASS devote their life to making the world and specifically Detroit a better place, and I felt like we could have easily dedicated more time there.

While my group was walking to the warehouse though, I viewed a lot more of what I would mentally picture when I hear Detroit.  It was like as soon as we left the city to head to CASS we were surrounded by run down houses with no yards and abandoned stores.  My eyes were opened that this isn’t what Detroit is, but there are still parts that need a lot of help and rebuilding.  It was so crazy to me how different two sides of the street could look.  On one side was the super nice brick building with a tall fence, and on the other were tightly-packed houses that looked like they needed a little  TLC. Working with CASS was easily 100% my favorite part of the trip to Detroit.

The trip to Detroit  made me want to do MORE—more service, more bonding with my LAS cohort, more learning about Detroit, more growth…more.

How a (gleeky) TV show changed my life

When I was little my family used to always make fun of me because I had what they called an “obsessive personality.”  I do not disagree with them because I get very hooked on specific TV shows, movies, bands, songs, foods, anything at a time.  However, one of my favorite TV shows and biggest obsession periods was the TV show Glee.

Glee is probably one of the dorkiest TV shows and that is exactly why I love it.  I first fell in love because it was a light-hearted funny show based on music…what wasn’t to love?  However, the show came out right when I was in middle school and my view on the world was expanding.  People quickly went from saying “that’s dumb” or “that’s stupid” in elementary school to “that’s gay” or “that’s retarded” in middle school and I HATED IT. I still do.  I could never really convince people that it wasn’t the nicest things to say, so I kind of kept to myself on the issue for a little while until this one episode inspired me to stand up to whoever said these harmful things.  One Tuesday night I was watching my favorite TV show and one of the characters said to one of the gay characters that something was “faggy.”  The dad quickly overheard and gave one of the greatest television speeches I have ever heard about this derogatory and exclusive language.  The video can be seen here.

This really opened my eyes to even though people are saying they don’t mean anything bad by saying “that’s gay” or “that’s retarded” they still are putting a negative connotation with words that should not have any negative connotation with them at all.  It creates a sense of superiority that is unnecessarily cruel and offensive.  This happened very early on in the show and it really opened the character’s eyes as it opened mine.  The show continued to tackle social issues, and, though it is heavily dramatized at times, it really sparked a fire in me to say “hey, judging others is not right!”

Because let’s be honest, what if the roles were reversed? Say in some parallel universe being a straight white male was the minority and it was treated as though it was a “disability” or a “handicap” rather than just a regular part of that person’s life?  What if people said “That’s so straight”?? Sounds pretty dumb doesn’t it? So why do people go around wasting breath with hateful and exclusive language?

I hope this is a fad that dies out, fast.

So, to all of you out there who get (lovingly)picked on by your family for loving a TV show, know that there is a chance it can change your view and outlook on the world and shape your life forever! Thanks Glee!!!

The Muggle World of Emma Watson

Emma Watson is seen as a beautiful and graceful actress who starred in one of the best film series of all time.  However, she is one of my biggest role models for many more reasons than that.  Here are a few:

1. She pours her life into her passions.                                                                               Emma took the opportunity after finishing Harry Potter to go to college to get an Education because it was something she was passionate about.  She started a campaign about feminism because it is something she was passionate about.  She devotes her life to charities because it is something she is passionate about.  Emma Watson lives her life through what she feels is important to her in the world.
2. She stands up for what she believes in.                                                                                         Emma Watson saw a change she wanted to make, so she launched a campaign to raise awareness for women’s rights around the world.  At such a young age she has made a large impact by making her voice heard and helping others all over the world.  She also has worked with the United Nations to help make her voice heard.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
3. She inspires others.                                                                                                              
   Through her He for She campaign she has   inspired others to learn and educate themselves about the inequalities around the world today.  Through her speaking her mind and standing up for what she believes in, she has inspired (such as me) to do the same.  She inspires by proving that standing up for what you believe in and being passionate is something we should all strive to do.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
4. She preaches and practices self-love.  Emma Watson prides herself on being her own person an loving that is different.  In fact, she wants everyone else to love themselves too.  She focuses her opinion on herself based solely on her own view of herself and not on what others may think.  She lives by the motto that she isn’t giving others or society the control to determine what she thinks of herself. This is a goal that I want to one day achieve and I think it is one of the most admirable traits of Emma Watson.

So, how does this make her an exemplary leader?  Well if it doesn’t go without saying,  Emma Watson has had a positive impact on tons of people, and continues to everyday.  Through her action she is creating more leaders to help make their own voices heard. Since she is an advocate for individuality she is inspiring others who do not necessarily have the same views as her, but is still wanting everyone to let their voice be heard.

How does she impact my life?  One day I hope to have inspired someone as much as Emma Watson as inspired me.  One of her passions, feminism, is something that I feel very passionate about as well, and through her actions and words I have learned a lot about what feminism is and how it can be interpreted to others.  She is a refreshing in terms of feminist role models in the country who are not necessarily political leaders.  The United States has many political leaders who are feminists, and lots of celebrities who claim to be.  However, Emma Watson is celebrity feminist who is practicing what she preaches and making a difference.  She isn’t saying she is a feminist for fame, she is doing it because she is passionate.

Another passion of Emma Watson’s is self-love.  This is something I have become extremely passionate about within the past year and moving to CMU.  I think a large part of being happy, having a healthy lifestyle, and helping others is having a healthy relationship with yourself.  Emma Watson gives great inspiration to others to allow them to love themselves.

I hope to continue my life and develop the leadership qualities that Emma Watson has.  She is a great role model for men, women, and young children.  I hope one day I can become a great role model too.  I can do this by improving on the qualities listed above.

Just because Emma Watson is amazing, here are some more of my fav quotes by her: