My top five strengths are (in order):

1. Restorative
2. Futuristic
3. Learner
4. Includer
5. Strategic

Includer

“This talent seems to give you an enormous amount of courage to reach out and actively bring the outsider in. The beauty of your include talent is that you can build relationships with literally anyone. But your specialty in relationship building is with the “invisible people” and people who others ignore. You instinctively know what to say and how to include those who others ignore and leave out.”

Although strengths are generally used in reference to leadership style or manner in which professional work is done, it is also true that our strengths are innate in us and can be seen even in our personal or social lives. The most important demonstration of my includer strength transpired about two years ago when I met my best friend, Zack. I was in Sacramento, California at the time with about 3,000 other high school students from across California for a youth and government conference. Many people knew Zack and thought he was a nice person, but I never really noticed him having close friends in the program as he was more shy than most. Although I could not pinpoint it as my includer strength at the time, something in me made me invite him to lunch and try to get to know him while in Sacramento. Many people, including Zack as he tells me today, thought it was strange that I invited some random person I didn’t know to get lunch (especially since we had gone to school together for years without really talking), but as the above statement says, includers just naturally reach out to people and find it easy to connect with them. In this situation I am glad to have had this strength as it allowed to to meet many incredible people, including my best friend.

Restorative

“The way you restore things involves bringing them back to life… The genius of your restorative strength is that you are so good at figuring out what is not working, resolving that, and then guiding people to a way of being healthy and highly functional.”

More than any other of my strengths, my restorative talent truly dictates my leadership style. I am always motivated to make changes by the way things once were and could be again and it is for this reason that I usually go out for leadership positions in the organizations that I am a part of. One instance of this was shown during my senior year of high school in which I was captain of the cheer team. Our incredibly experienced coach of about fifteen years had just retired a year prior and because she was extremely tough and effective, everyone was afraid we would no longer be the team we once were under her leadership. Because of the restorative (along with the futuristic) trait in me, I was able to envision a new team just as good as the old one. I worked tirelessly that year to motivate the team and implement changes in practice schedules, the conduction of practices, and the overall attitudes of my team members in order to make them see that we could be just as good under new leadership. As the description of the restorative strength implies, I simply decided what needed to be fixed and guided my team members in the right direction but the real success of the team came from them.

Learner

“The genius of your learner talent begins with the fact that you love to learn in many areas… based on this understanding of the learning process in yourself and others, you can establish ingenious programs and services to help others become better learners, high achievers, and be better prepared for the future.”

Having the strength of a learner means not only having a passion for learning new things, but also understanding the ways in which I and those around me learn best. One situation in which I really demonstrated this strength is when I began tutoring at my high school. It began with just studying with a few friends who were struggling in economics, a class all seniors at my school were required to take with the same teacher who many found it difficult to learn from. Because of my learner strength, I knew how to succeed in this class and offered to help a few of my close friends. These weekly study sessions turned into full blown tutoring sessions twice a week after class. Often times my parents would tell me to make a job out of tutoring, which I tried for a little while with nearby elementary school kids, but I never wanted to do it for the money; I genuinely enjoyed learning these concepts and helping others learn them, too.

For the photo partner project, I paired up with Hannah Putman. In order to get to know each other better, Hannah and I went to dinner together earlier in the week. Although it can be hard to get to know someone in such a short period of time, I learned many things that I did not previously know about her. In the photo, Hannah is pictured lying on her bed with a book in hand. I chose to photograph her this way mostly due to her love of reading. Over diner, Hannah and I learned that we share a love of books and we even had some similar favorite authors. While talking about reading, Hannah became very excited and I could tell that this was a large part of who she was. I wanted to capture her in a place she loved, and while talking,  Hannah and I also bonded over our love of naps and sleeping as much as possible so, her bed seemed to be the only fitting place to take this picture. As a whole, however, I wanted to capture Hannah’s curiosity for life and knowledge. She has not declared a major and, after talking to her, I can see why. She has a very diverse personality; she loves different genres of music, types of movies, and species of animals. We asked each other many “get to know you” questions over dinner, and whenever asked to pick a favorite of something, Hannah struggled to answer. She is a unique individual who cannot be pinned down into one category, and through reading I think Hannah explores more of what life has to offer and learns about who she wants to become.