Royals 15

During the ending of my Junior year I learned that I was selected to attend a five day leadership conference with Gear Up during summer in San Francisco, California. Gear Up is a program that helps low income students with gaining early awareness and readiness for a college education. Going into the leadership conference I had not had much leadership experience besides group work in class and working on my 20/20 Olympics project. I took the conference as a chance to see how to grow and improve as a leader. My idea of leadership is collaborating with the team, gathering everyone’s ideas and removing a few things that might not work and then combining them. I believe this is a very effective way to work as a team because everyone has input into a project and the leader is leading a team not just taking over the team and dictating what to do. I knew that many other students from different states would also be participating in the conference, so I was excited to get exposure to different perspectives and also have the chance to meet new people with completely different backgrounds. Even though I was excited, I was also nervous because I didn’t really know what to expect. Although I didn’t know what to expect from the conference, I did know that the conference would be a national-level interactive training experience that would be a peer-to-peer learning opportunity that focused on life and leadership for students that participate with Gear up. I learned that there would be different groups to join. In these groups we would be working towards a project where everyone would present up on stage. These projects would be related to problems in our society. For example there was one group that was about bringing awareness to gun violence. But my group was called the Special Ops, we were in charge of gathering information to present it to the groups. We would get supplies, answer questions, and help with preparations for the event. Although the Special Ops didn’t present up on stage, we were behind the scenes preparing all the groups for the big day. I learned that having people motivate you when you feel like giving up is a very crucial thing because during our time there we were tired and exhausted because of how much work we would put in for our projects and activities. But we continued to push forward because we had people around us supporting us. Many of us forget the importance of motivating others and supporting them just because we get used to it. But some people don’t have the support they need and so we must always remember that having that support is very important. Something I also learned is that having some control over the team is important but not to over do it. I always told myself that I didn’t want to control my team but I now realize that control is important to keep the team focused and efficient. Without control in a team things will not get done and no one will listen. My leadership skills will benefit me because I plan to be a Civil Engineer which requires a lot of teamwork and planning. Leadership abilities help engineers in problem-solving by promoting critical thinking, decision-making, and adaptability in addressing complex challenges.