LEAD program

Hey all,

These past few days, I’ve been participating in Leadership Engagement and Development (LEAD), which is a program for freshmen to develop leadership skills and learn about opportunities to get involved with various aspects of college life in the upcoming years. Almost thirty of us were chosen through the application process and we had an amazing mix of people from a variety of majors.

We spent one day at a low ropes course in Virginia. I still think it’s exciting that I can pass through multiple states in one day. We spent one entire day there. The other two days we spent doing workshops facilitated by a variety of people, from an Area Coordinator to a lady from a leadership foundation in Indiana.

I especially enjoyed meeting the people I met. It’s kind of amazing how, even within a school of barely 1800 people, there can be faces I’ve never seen. I live in DMC and tend to spend a lot of time in Whiteford, so there are people who live in Rouzer that I’ve gone an entire semester without meeting. I like environments like Lead though, because it allows me to have pretty intense conversations with people I mayn’t have known for very long.

We talked a lot about different leadership styles, and one of the biggest things I realized is that everyone in a way wants to be a leader, though people have very different styles. I, for example, am not the type of person who’ll instantly put myself out somewhere and volunteer to be the leader. However, I like to lead by example–I like to put my best self forward and hope that I can inspire other people through what I do to be better versions of themselves. The program will continue meeting through the semester, and I’m excited to see what my peers will do to change the school.

Ema