When I began my college journey at Minnesota State University Mankato, the last thing I considered myself was a leader. I knew I was smart, capable, and determined because these were the traits that had gotten me successfully through high school. However, I always considered traits like these meaningless when it came to leadership, because (according to my standards) these were not the “real” traits that made someone a leader such as confidence and charisma. Then, I took HONR 201 during my second semester of freshman year of college which drastically changed my perspective towards this topic. In this class, I learned that leadership is not a “one size fits all” situation and that everyone can become a leader if they are able to identify their strengths and maximize them when working with others. This newfound knowledge encouraged me to reanalyze myself under this lens and explore my strengths, which I identified using the Clifton StrengthsFinder. 

 

Despite my lingering uncertainty about being qualified to become a student leader, I took a huge leap of faith my sophomore year of college and applied to work as a Learning Community Coordinator (LCC) on campus. This position allowed me to apply the leadership theories I learned in HONR 201 to a real-life situation. It also allowed me to shape and define my leadership values through trial-and-error experiences I had working with my learning community. As I learned about leadership in a more traditional setting, I also learned about leadership through mentorship in my HONR 401 class. This class provided me a new perspective on this topic as it focused on leadership through relational authority rather than positional authority. It also pushed me to analyze myself more honestly, reflecting on my strengths and weaknesses, so that I could lead others with more honesty and integrity.

 

As I became comfortable with this new facet of myself, I took on other leadership roles more confidently such as the being president of the Honors Student Body (HSB) during my junior year of college. Although I held similar responsibilities as when working as an LCC (i.e. directing a large group of people towards a common goal, planning events, etc.), this position taught me to play closer attention to the different roles within a team, since everyone under my direction had specific roles and responsibilities. I learned that no matter how different the roles where between our team members, they all contributed equally to the make-up of our team and complemented each other. The lessons that I learned from this experience helped me become a better team member when I became involved with Maverick Vocal Precision (MVP). I applied these complementary lessons on leadership values and team work when supervising a group of literacy instructors as an AmeriCorps VISTA. This allowed me to successfully lead them through a summer of service at their sites while refining and defining my own leadership philosophy for future group collaborations.

​

As I graduate from Minnesota State University Mankato and enter the workforce, my leadership philosophy will continue evolving, especially as I become a classroom teacher. However, I no longer doubt my leadership competency, since my undergraduate experiences have provided me a solid foundation of knowledge and skills to confidently lead others.