ISLE & the Learning Community Mid-Year Institute

My weekend was filled with learning about becoming a great leader. The Learning Community Mid-Year Institute and ISLE presented information about leadership that I found to be interesting.  Various speakers defined leadership differently, although they were all similar, and gave characteristics of good leaders.

While at the Learning Community Mid-Year Institute, I attended a session on stress and how to relax and the other session I attended was on using social media to connect with the mentees. The stress session identified common characteristics of stress and gave different methods to help relieve the stress. I believe that being able to detect stress in a person would be great information for a peer mentor to have because there are many stresses as an incoming freshman and some people who may need help may not admit it.

The social media session was not as interesting because I knew most of the information already. WISE presented information on how they use Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook to connect with members. I think using social media is a great way to connect with college students because most of use check social media sites a lot more often than our emails.

The opening speaker at ISLE was great! The keynote speaker, Delatorro McNeal, was very entertaining. McNeal explained the importance of peer leaders and mentors and gave inspiring clips from movies during his presentation. The session I attend was not as interesting. The coordinator of the ROTC program gave a presentation of leadership and the characteristics of a leader. The speaker asked a lot of questions and called on people in the small audience. At the end of the presentation, He explained the reason why he choose to present that way. He presented in that manner because people tend to learn the best when they are involved in their learning. I loved the idea but not while I was being called on. I would like to use a type of interactive learning in the future with the mentees.    

Overall, I felt both conferences were helpful to me developing my leadership skills. I also enjoyed meeting mentors and leaders from different organizations around campus. A quote to some up what I learned by John Quincy Adams would be "If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, and become more, you are a leader."