Coursework

LDRS 1015- Exploring Citizen Leadership

Exploring Citizen Leadership was the first leadership course I took, and it was part of being in the Residential Leadership Community, now the Leadership and Social Change Residential College. This course met in the dorm, and we got to know other students in the community in a smaller environment.

In this course we were challenged to share our opinions while learning from other’s experiences. We spent time learning about and discussing different types of leadership, learning about ourselves and outlooks in the process. Some things we covered in this class included our strengths, values, task versus relationship oriented, and many different leadership philosophies. The idea is that we were beginning to create a blueprint of our own personal leadership philosophy, pulling features from different styles and molding it into our own.

My first artifact is my “This I Believe” statement that everyone in the RLC wrote and had the option of sharing. The second went over my top values, that I saw and that my closest friends from home saw in me.  As a read these back almost four years later, I find it humorous because I see how I’ve grown, but also the way I think has shaped my college experience and career advances. The statement made of “no matter how hard you work, life is still going to screw you over,” really attests to the mindset of hard work but also and priority of networking. I got my post-graduation job from attending a conferences and events while getting to know the right people, not because I had a spectacular GPA; which is slightly less than spectacular at this point.

This course helped me realize how task oriented I was and am. I was able to then challenge myself to put an emphasis on the relational portion of my collegiate activities since the task portion came more naturally. Ultimately the shift in focus has helped me find my future career and the joy that I have challenging myself to work with people with also setting short and long-term goals. This relates to the Social Change Model specifically when looking at Individual Values. The start of my collegiate leadership journey emphasized a consciousness of self, encouraging use to be aware of our beliefs, values, attitudes, and motivators.