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.

Which one is the Mentor?

As a member of LAS, during my sophomore year I mentor one of the members of LAS in the freshman cohort.  I had the absolute privilege of having Julie Martin as my mentee.  I have a great relationship with my mentor, Stephanie, and I was worried that my relationship with Julie was not going to be as strong.  I felt like I still relied on Steph a lot, and was nervous that I was not going to be ready for a mentee of my own.  Despite these initial fears,  I did know that I had a lot of love for CMU to share and I was going to be able to care for my mentee and help them with whatever I was able to.

From the start, I started learning more from Julie than I think she even knows.  Even as a freshman entering college,  I have never met a stronger human.  With all of the stress and things that were thrown her way from the very beginning of her college career, Julie showed the ultimate definition of maturity in handling everything.  I have never met a person in my life who can truly take a situation and look at it from every side the way Julie does.  Her strength does not even begin to compare for her heart.  Through getting to know Julie, I have learned that she has the biggest heart of anyone I have ever met.  This is what makes Julie such an amazing leader.  She cares about the people around her and making them grow.  She is the definition of authenticity and servant leadership because she is putting everyone around her first, but she does not lose who she is in the process.  When I am around Julie, I want to be a better leader.

One of the ways I have grown in terms of my leadership skills with Julie is my communication skills.  I have learned to ask what she needed. Feedback is a large part of being successful in any capacity, and our mentor-mentee relationship does not end here.  I have asked her what I have done that has helped her and what hasn’t.  This way in the future I will be able to help her in whatever way is best fit.

I know through these next years at CMU Julie and I will continue to have a close relationship, and I know that I will continue to grow and learn from her as I hope she is learning from me as well.

My Mentor kicks Buck(holz)

My LAS mentor is Stephanie (Her last name is Buckholz if you didn’t understand the pun).  But not only is she my mentor, she is one of my best friends.

Coming into college I was extremely intimidated by LAS.  I wasn’t really sure what it was, or what being a part of it entailed.  Steph helped smooth everything out, and helped me realize how to get all my crap together in the midst of coming to college.  I feel like this is something most mentees can say about their mentor, but not many can say that they feel like their mentor is their other half.  Steph literally always knows how to make me smile or laugh with one look.  We truly understand each other so well, and we are so able to be open with each other.  The two of us share a lot of passions, such as the environment, women’s rights, and more, so we never are in a lack of intellectual conversation.  We both are completely fascinated by science, and have had countless conversations about how in awe we are of the way the human body works.  She is someone who I connect with so well on these deeper levels, but I cannot overlook how much our quirky goofy personalities go together.

I learned a lot about what type of mentor I want to be through my relationship with Steph.  Steph and I got to be so close because we would make plans to have mentor/mentee dates to get dinner around once a week.  These dinner plans quickly turned into something I looked forward to, and they are always the bright light of my week.  By always having the plans to see each other, it became so much easier for us to connect and get comfortable with each other.  Next year, when I am a mentor I plan on doing the same sort of thing with my mentee.  I want to be friends with my mentee, not just be their mentor.

Having such a close relationship with Stephanie has made having her as a Mentor so much easier.  I am eternally grateful for her love and friendship, and I cannot wait to get closer over the years.

 

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.

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: