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Hi, I'm Ryan Etchison, I'm Linell Grzesik, Xiaoying Lou and I'm a Dean's Scholar
I decided to combined a number passions for my Dean's Scholars
program one for creative writing
another for opera
uh... to create a portfolio
of my leadership experience, or my leadership journey really
and using a template of a three act opera to come across with that
At each of the different parts of the opera really serves to convey to this story and the
overarching themes of the story to the audience members
I feel that by taking this format and using it as a template for portfolio i
was really able to put structure to my leadership journey and experiences I've
had and then to dig out some of the deeper themes that I hold I guess is my core
uh... the form the basis of leadership philosophy of how I approach situations,
make decisions, act
and do other things of that sort.
So. my project was a timeline of my self awareness, citizenship and change
throughout my four years in the Dean's Scholars program
and I chose this because I wanted to see
how I've changed on a timeline, I wanted to see it altogether
and I wanted to draw from my other papers that I had written and from
my other reflections I had done throughout the four years so I can not
just speculate about how i was as a leader but actually
take quotes from those papers
and really see how I was and what I thought and then compare those
throughout the four years. I found that
as far as self awareness I definitely became more defined on who I am and
i looked a lot more at the activities I'm doing and my lifestyle and the type of things,
the goals I have in life. It has helped me a lot in applying to medical school
and figuring out what i want to do with my life and how i can define myself
and I think that's really important. So the basic premise for my Dean's Scholars
capstone project was this idea of leadership as a puzzle for me and
actually came from my
original experiences with Dean's Scholars all of us on Dean's Scholars have had the
experience of the initial get to know each other activity where we pick a
photo of what we think represents
leadership this puzzle piece, it's at picture of just various jigsaw puzzle
pieces kind of linked together
and originally had the idea of uh... leadership, or a leader being
someone who is able to identify people's strengths and areas for growth and
piece the puzzles together to kind of make this overall picture or
puzzle that is greater than any one of us any one of those pieces could've
accomplished on its own.
um... so the project itself is instead of actually having kind of these
individual components of the leadership it's about my leadership
experiences and so I had posted pictures
of various experiences I've had throughout the four years
Various service experiences or various experiences with the student board etc.
on these from board pieces, had them laminated and then cut out the
pieces and Velcro them so its kind of this hands on
piecing together of various experiences throughout the last four years
and think that really embodies what I've learned from
the Dean's Scholars program as a whole over the last
few years that in the course of putting these experiences together
that it has not been a singular kind of linear path to my leadership development
but has been in multiple dimensions in a lot of ways that I've
learned and the themes of self-awareness, citizenship and creating change
and that each piece has been pivotal in shaping who I am and how I'm
continuing to develop and building on the skills I have as a leader.
I think in the beginning it was kind of to
put it on your application but
after I started going through some of the reflections I think it was
at the end of my sophomore year when I really realized, wow I can really do
activities that mean something to me and mean something to my future and not just
go through and put it on an application and
and that'll make me a better applicant because I'll
be able to articulate myself
i think just having that
any that forced reflection in the beginning soon became reflection that i
would just do spontaneously. The biggest thing I've taken away from
the Dean's Scholars program is that to be a good leader, you first have to be a good
follower.
this is something I learned a long time ago. I think this kind of
forms the core of what my leadership idea is. If you're going to be a leader in
you're going to lead individuals you can't effectively do it unless you know
what it's like to be a follower to understand what it's like to have needs
and then to have to look to a leader to meet those needs for you about
whatever means you can. Until you really understand
what it is to have those kind of needs I don't think you can lead people effectively
because it's hard to strike a common chord with something that you don't know
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