Leadership: Learning to become by Joel

Leadership: Learning to become by Joel - March 2015 Scholarship Essay

The most important lessons that I learned in my academic career have been a result of having been a volunteer chemistry tutor and having managed the Red Cross blood drives for my school.

Through tutoring I learned to adapt to teaching students with many different learning styles. This was sometimes difficult especially when students did not want to work very hard. Those I tutored often didn't even know how they preferred to learn. Tutoring required a lot of patience, trial, and error, but yielded tremendous satisfaction, especially when I could help someone who had just about lost hope in their ability to succeed gain the excitement I shared for the chemistry. Because of my experience as a tutor I discovered that I learn best through organizing information into visual representations. I carry a personal wipe board and dry erase markers now everywhere I go. I also found that the more learning methods you can incorporate into your study of a particular subject, the stronger your understanding will be of the material. This was apparent when I took my MCAT test for medical school and found the chemistry section to be my highest score.

The other important lesson I learned through my leadership experience in school came as a result of managing the Red Cross blood drives at BYU-Idaho. I set up a group of volunteers, recruited fellow students to participate in donating blood, and assisted during the actual blood drive event by giving out refreshments and making sure the students had a positive experience. My biggest challenge during this whole semester was to find an effective way to get as many students to donate their blood as possible. I used emailing lists of previous donors, I set up booths manned by two committee members (where one would sign up the donors and the other was responsible for stopping passerby’s and convincing them to sign up), and I presented before other organizations on campus to reach out to a broader more diverse audience. It was difficult; some of the committee members refused to recruit and would just hope that students would sign theirselves up. This was the biggest challenge I have had as a leader. I could tell that unless my committee members were more motivated we would not reach our goals. In our council meetings I collaborated with the committee members to discover how we could help each other to become better at recruiting. This resulted in us keeping score of our recruits and the top three scorers earned prizes like a new backpack or a five dollar gift card. The volunteers were also given a hand out to help them find ways to open up conversation with the passing students. It was neat to see the growth in some of our volunteers that at first had trouble looking people in the eye. In the end there were many things we would have changed if we could do the process over again, but we were successful because we grew and found out how to best utilize the strengths of our committee members (some were better at recruiting and others were better at organizing the emailing list/phone numbers). This experience taught me how to have a positive influence upon others. Leadership requires creating a vision for what the organization wants to accomplish and then inspiring others toward that vision.

Can a student get away with not participating in any leadership in college and still graduate? Yes, but can they discover their inner strengths and develop in meaningful ways through their academic progress? Arguably not. Successful education does not simply result in a degree; it results in a mature man or woman that has become empowered with the ability to change their life and the lives of those within their community.