Over my sophomore year I have developed my leadership skills immensely. Prior to this year I had never held a serious leadership position, this year I was elected to be the Philanthropy Chair of my honorary and with this came great responsibility. As it turns out, my honorary’s president would have family problems and be unable to perform her role throughout the year. What’s more, the vice-president was willing to fill her shoes. This left the majority of the weight to fall of me and the rest of the executive board’s shoulders.

Through being on the Exec team of ALDPES I learned the importance of working as a team in a way I hadn’t experienced before. I tend to be a perfectionist and like to take over to make sure everything works. I’ve learned however, that sometimes you have to lean on other people. You have to trust other people to be able to get the job done. I learned that cooperation and sharing of ideas actually makes the end product much better than it would have been with just my thoughts and efforts. I am thankful that I got to work together with a group of committed and hardworking students in ALDPES and would never take the experience back.