A Transformative Experience by Makayla

A Transformative Experience by Makayla - March 2015 Scholarship Essay

Leadership skills are necessary for college success. Those with these skills give other students a vision. They articulate this shared vision and show others how they may reach it. They symbolize and embody worthy shared goals and inspire others to strive to achieve them. Leaders help a group find solutions, solve problems, and move forward. Without leaders, many college students would fall gravely short of their vast potential. Those with leadership skills will not follow other “leaders” down paths that lead to futility and wasted time. They will not be taken in by popular trends on campus such as video games, excessive drinking or drugs that will lead them to ultimate failure both in college and in life. Instead those with leadership skills can help other students develop good study and class attendance habits.

As we enter college, we will soon discover that college is a place to learn and grow. It is important for students to develop leadership skills throughout their time at college, as they are very integral to anything you might hope to achieve post-college. College provides many opportunities to develop skills that are possessed by highly effective leaders. It is best to start looking for opportunities to lead and to become a better leader as soon as you get to college. There are a number of opportunities on campus for college students to develop leadership skills. Some ways to be a leader at your college are: be a resident advisor in your residence hall, run for student government, run for a leadership role in a club or organization you are involved with, or become an admissions ambassador and show perspective students your campus. Leaders are needed for many tasks on campus, and if you put in the effort to find leadership opportunities, you will find many.

It is natural to be afraid of failure, especially when you are entering into a new, unknown environment. This fear is mostly unwarranted, and the greatest failure is allowing fear to keep you from accomplishing something great, in this case, keeping you from developing leadership skills and from becoming a leader. Fear is not a leadership quality. Fear can consume you and leave you frozen, even stricken. Leaders feel fear but do what they need to or have to anyways. Leaders are inspired by the by their goals as well as by their followers, which are just leaders in training. Leadership skills are needed for college success because they allow you to get things done, even in the face of great adversity. Those lacking these skills will freeze and be unproductive when difficulties arise. College is full of hardship, and leadership skills are crucial for those who plan on being productive in this intense, often challenging environment.

College needs to be more than a place to come and go. It should be a transformative experience allowing you to leave a positive legacy of your existence on the campus. College is a place for you to find yourself and to develop the necessary skills needed for the real world after graduation. Leadership skills will be needed in every single aspect of life, whether it is in your future workplace or in your own family. Hopefully new college students will already possess some of these all important leadership skills, but if not, they will need to develop them quickly upon their arrival if they hope to succeed in either college or in life. Leadership skills are needed if you hope to accomplish anything in life, especially when trying to handle the curveballs that life throws at you because they will come, especially in college. In order to be ready, develop your skills in leadership.