Lead To Succeed by Jacob

Lead To Succeed by Jacob - March 2015 Scholarship Essay

The question: “Are leadership skills necessary for college success?”

First, we might think about a few ideas the majority of people consider indicators of college success. Some of us include getting decent grades, finding a subject that is interesting and graduating as key indicators. However, there are those that hold themselves to a higher regard; those that have more visceral notions of what success really means. We’ve all seen people that fall on both sides of the fence, but for the sake of making a novel argument, I’ll bet that we believe success consists of a lot more than just graduating. In this case, leadership skills are truly necessary for college students, in particular, because college is cooperative, students are expected to present original ideas and they desire results.

When I was about five years old, I could perform a pretty good soliloquy in my grandparents living room. But when my cousins and I got together to perform an entire play, we had the whole family in stitches. Each of us remembers what it was like to learn how to work well with others. With college students working together to do everything from researching the latest medical breakthrough to solving major economic challenges, leadership skills can’t be an afterthought. Leadership skills are necessary because they ensure that the collaborative environment doesn’t leave a highly achieving student behind. College is a microcosm of the professional workplace where the understanding of interpersonal relationships can make or break a career. It’s imperative that students have a basic understanding of the principles that leadership teaches, i.e., the importance of building rapport, being flexible and the power of earning respect through hard work.

How do college students cultivate and present original ideas? We can learn through a leadership role to be creative when working with a variety of different people. Along with developing creativity, student leaders learn to present ideas at a college-level by engaging and inspiring people - instead of merely speaking to them. These two pillars of college success, creativity and effective presentation, are only truly activated through leadership.

As a middle and high school student I always wanted to go to college because I wanted to become a lawyer or doctor. I didn’t want to go just to try doing those things or to possibly enter a lucrative career, I desired results. We want to do something meaningful with our lives as college students and the established system operates on the tangible results of work well-done. Our work is reviewed and graded to determine if we’ve produced something valuable. Leadership skills teach us to analyze our own weaknesses so that we can apply solutions along with others. This solution mindset helps us reach the higher levels of understanding that impressive results require. Our work, reinforced with experience working with others, manifests itself in the ability to stand out on paper, engage a panel of interviewers and secure the jobs reserved for those college students who deliver the next level of astounding results.

In essence, what it means to be successful in college is highly subjective. However, with colleges seeking out students with a well-rounded high-school resumes, what the colleges really want is simpler to deduce. Leadership skills, whether we gain them as cheerleading captain or moderator of a trendy blog, are the necessary link to college success. These skills give students the ultimate fortification to their character in the form of interpersonal skills that serve every area of their lives. Leadership skills create the drive for students to push for the next level of excellence in everything that they do. College success is just the icing on the cake.