Course and Personal Reflection
My goals throughout this course have shifted to reflect how I have grown as an individual and in my leadership skills. Last year, my goals reflected how I was less experienced in leadership roles. I simply wished to become a consistent contributor during the planning and execution stage, and to try different approaches to leadership. This year, my goals changed from participation to making more impactful contributions to the events I took part in.
Last year, I wrote that I was more interested in what qualities makes a leader successful. My main goal was to try many different approaches to leadership so that I could find what my personal strengths and weaknesses were. From there, I could recognize what skills to work on what I could add to the team. At the time, I had less experience and could not identify many leadership qualities that I possessed. I believe that I successfully reached my goal, because at the end of the year, I realized that I contribute the most with organizational and marketing roles, such as promotional materials and bulletin boards. With Leadership, along with my other extracurriculars, I have identified a leadership style that suits me.
This year, I built upon my prior knowledge and focused more on how I could utilize my strengths to contribute more to group efforts. At the midterm, I identified how I was struggling to manage academics, Leadership, and other extracurriculars simultaneously. I focused on time management as a goal during the second semester by prioritizing my tasks more effectively. Rather than completing my work in a random order, I made it a priority to finish my most important tasks early on the weekends (studying for tests) and easier ones later (assignments) so that I had extra time to put towards my extracurriculars on the weekdays. This freed up more time in my schedule outside of school hours.
Overall, my experience in Leadership has been immensely positive. As a student who tends to focus on the academic side of school, Leadership has helped me recognize the importance of engaging with one’s community and peers. While I still have much to improve on, I have had a great start on building up my leadership skills.