Post #7

I originally signed up for the Exploring Leadership class to improve my leadership with respect to one specific field: public health. Next year I will be attending graduate school for public health, and I know that leadership is a vital component to the field. I have several friends in Masters in Public Health programs currently that all need to take leadership classes. There are many reasons that people in the public health field need to understand good leadership skills. Many times, public health professionals will have to come up with initiatives that could further improve overall health. These are very often collaborative efforts with other professionals, so there is a need for collaborative methods of leadership. I hope to use the leadership traits and skills that we have talked about in class this semester and apply them to my graduate and professional career. After I finish graduate school, I hope to become an epidemiologist. Much of the work that an epidemiologist does is related to disease control and prevention. Since particularly virulent pathogens are always evolving, there is a need to create new initiatives on how to prevent different types of diseases. I hope to take a leadership role in some of these public health initiatives, and learning about the different styles and aspects of leadership will be helpful in the development of my future career. I am particularly interested in disadvantaged population health, and am eager to explore new ways to aid the overall health of these populations.When I think to myself what type of difference I will make as a leader, I hope that I am able to make a difference in the health of all types of people. I hope that my passion for public health will allow me to make this type of difference.

Post #6

A time that my values conflicted with the values of an organization to which I belonged was my time in high school. I was raised Catholic by my family and decided to go to a Catholic high school, St. Xavier, when I was in 8^th grade. The decision wasn’t motivated by religion on my part, but it may have been from my parent’s end. Around my junior year of high school I discovered that organized religion, in particular Catholicism, wasn’t for me. However, the religious nature of my high school had not changed. I found myself at odds with the way many things were taught simply because they didn’t appeal to me. After some time, however, I realized that this wasn’t the way to continue my education. Therefore, instead of attempting to battle religious education, I embraced the aspects that could still apply to my life. For example, one of the most important parts of Jesuit philosophy is finding God within all things. I realized that this did not have to just apply to God, but could also signify finding value in any number of things. Finding value in religious classes that I may not have agreed with the basic tenets of was very valuable for me in terms of getting the most out of my education. My senior year I took a religion elective called “Question of God”, which turned out to be one of the best classes I took all throughout high school. The class was taught by two staunchly Catholic men, but was very discussion based and encouraged dissenting viewpoints. By the end of the class, I had thought more about my spirituality in that one semester than I had in the previous three years. For me, finding worth in the differences between myself and my high school allowed me to resolve the conflict between our own values.

Post #5

It was very interesting to see the differences between how I perceive myself and my leadership reputation and how others do. The three people I chose were two of my close friends and my older sister, all of whom know me rather well. However, their responses were significantly different than both how I perceived myself and how I thought others perceived me. Many of the flaws and things that I could work on that I thought were apparent to everyone were not perceived by my friends and sister. I believe that one of the reasons for this is that one of my strengths is being deliberative. Since I tend to be careful with both my words and actions, I usually do not show chinks in my leadership armor, so to speak. Another potential reason is that we tend to be harsher critics of ourselves than of others. While it is probably true that I am occasionally egotistical or pessimistic, the people close to me realize that those characteristics are not emblematic of my leadership style. Alternately, I had never really thought of myself as something like “committed to a common vision” until one of my friends brought up several instances in which I fit exactly that description. This exercise made me realize that my idea of how others perceive me is not necessarily how others actually perceive me. Of course some of the traits lined up, such as intelligent, well informed, or sarcastic, but many of my ideas on how others perceived me came from how I perceive myself. This lets me know that I should strive to get more feedback in both a professional and personal environment, so that I can both better myself as a leader and have a better idea as to how others perceive me as a leader and as a friend.

Post #4

The identity that I find myself most aware of on a daily basis is my race. Although my parents were both born in India, I was born here. This has often left me feeling in some sort of in-between state: not Indian enough for Indian people but not white enough for white people. This element of my identity has probably been most crucial to my development. I went to a high school with an overwhelming white majority, which caused me to hide the more “Indian” parts of myself. Some people referred to me as “the whitest Indian they knew”, which wasn’t an unfair descriptor at the time. It was only after I came to college that I was able to embrace my entire identity, both Indian and American. The identity that I feel provides me with the most privilege is being male. Hearing stories from female friends or my sisters about being harassed or not taken seriously has made me realize how much more valued masculinity is in American culture than femininity. On the other hand, being non-white in a white culture has denied me of some privilege. I believe that privilege plays some role in daily interactions with others, but not as big of a role as it does in the working world. In college, quite a few people are from approximately the same type of background. This is even truer if you begin to hang out with people in the same major, or working at the same co-op, or who have the same interests. However, after college I feel that privilege will definitely play a larger role in the everyday conversations that I have with other people. People tend to jump to snap judgments about others, and from that dynamic it is easy to see that privilege will play a role in everyday interactions, especially with strangers.

Post #3

My top five strengths according to StrengthsQuest are adaptability, input, intellection, analytical, and deliberative. Some of these surprised me, while others did not. The three strengths that I was completely unsurprised by were intellection, analytical, and deliberative. I have always considered myself to be an introspective, thoughtful person. I've also always considered my greatest strengths to come from my intelligence and ability to think things through thoroughly, while also being careful not to disclose too much information. While initially I was a little bit surprised by the presence of adaptibility on my strengths list, after thinking about it for some time it made sense to me. I have never been someone who needed a lot of structure, preferring to go with the flow. I rarely plan things out beforehand, and while this annoys people sometime (namely my mom) it has always been the best way for me to complete projects and assignments. The wild card for me in the top five was input. When I first saw the word, I had no idea what it was supposed to mean. It only confused me more when I saw that people with input as their strength were supposed to exhibit some sort of magpie-like hoarding tendencies, which doesn't describe me at all. However, in a less physical sense, I am a collector. I love having a broad knowledge base, and pride myself on knowing at least a little bit about a lot of different things, ranging from music to science. Now that I have a concrete list of some of my best strengths, I think applying it to leadership should be relatively simple. I know that I will never be the charismatic leader who uses their charm to pull a group in a certain direction, but I can use my broad knowledge base and deliberative nature to make sure that we are making the right decisions. In the last month, I have seen myself use each of my five strengths. When I hadn't studied enough for an exam, I was able to use my intellection and input to draw on previous knowledge from other classes and still do well. I used the rest of my strengths while working on a project at the free clinic that I volunteer at, using a combination of deliberation, analysis, and adaptability to successfully translate a colonoscopy preparation guide into Spanish for native speakers who do not know English. Knowledge of my strengths will definitely allow me to succeed in both leadership and in other projects.

Post #2

Leadership is a very important aspect in both the discipline of biology and Spanish. In biology, it is important to be proactive in terms of research. If there is an area of research that has not been explored heavily, it is necessary to take a leadership role. You have to attempt to secure grants, hire research assistants, and collaborate with other labs. In this sense, the paradigm that biology professionals share is one of collaborative leadership. Everyone’s research uses principles and methods that were developed by others, and oftentimes labs collaborate with each other when their research is similar. Each lab has a principal investigator who heads the lab, but everyone who works there has their own responsibilities delegated to them, and there is a definite sense of community among those who work in the same lab. Ethically, there are certain responsibilities when using human samples. It is important to not reveal any information about patients who have donated tissue samples to be researched. It is also important not to do research that might cross ethical guidelines established by the scientific community. Leadership is also important in the discipline of Spanish. Many Spanish majors become translators after graduation, and as a translator it is vital to be a part of the community. You are acting as a liaison between the English and Spanish speaking communities, and it is necessary to demonstrate authentic leadership. Ethically, it is important to treat everybody with respect. I work as a medical interpreter in a free clinic, and although the clientele are below the poverty line and often do not speak Spanish, they should still be treated like a patient in any other hospital. Regardless of your personal feelings on illegal immigration or other political issues, ethical leadership is critical in the discipline of Spanish interpretation.

Post #1

To me, leadership is defined by calm in the face of pressure. A leader is somebody who can guide people through a difficult task or event while ensuring that everybody remains in a normal state of mind. The people I know who I think of as leaders exhibit a cool head when they are looked to for answers. Thinking back, my greatest leadership experience came during my senior year of high school. I was assigned to a freshman homeroom to help guide the younger students. That was one of the first times that I remember realizing that I was a role model in their eyes, and I had to do my best to show them how to adjust to some of the difficulties of high school. Even though I still felt like a kid who didn’t really have anything figured out, I had to help them with problems that I had dealt with just a few years previously. Everything from new classes and coming from a grade school where they didn’t know anybody to talking to girls at mixers were brought up, and I had to do my best to assure them that they would turn out fine. While I clearly didn’t have the answers to all of their questions, this experience led me to be more comfortable both in my skin and in leadership positions in general. While before my senior year I tended to shy away from positions of leadership, fearing that people would not see me as capable, I realized that a lot of the time being a leader can be the same as being there for people. Since this experience, I have stepped up into several leadership positions, including captaincy for intramural teams that I never would have considered in the past. Due to this formative experience, the definition of leadership for me has become one more synonymous with empathy and a willingness to try rather than purely strength.