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.