Autumn 2022

            With this being my second year as an honors peer educator, my views on what leadership is and what it means for me in the context of being not just an instructor, but also a peer have been vastly changed. The main new aspect of leadership that I grappled with this quarter was adaptability, but in a different way from last year. Last year, I also said adaptability in the moment because plans tend to change, schedules get altered, and students need different kinds of support from what I might have previously expected. However, this year I mean adaptability in the sense of overcoming those expectations from a past year since my class was significantly different this year. Since I thought my class’s engagement was stellar last year, I decided to keep most of my lesson plans the same under the assumption that it would have the same outcome. However, I was wrong in making that assumption as this year’s class seemed to be much quieter than I had anticipated. Thus, I had to adapt not only mentally, but also physically by altering around my lesson plans (particularly icebreakers) to find new ways that would be more engaging to this specific set of students. Essentially, this quarter has taught me that while experience is useful, it is never complete until you are in the moment adjusting to the unique personalities of each person in a class, and that is what true leadership is.

            In future leadership roles, I want to be seen as someone who people can go to as an equal. Of course respectful acknowledgement of someone’s particular knowledge or skillset is important, although I think some interactions between students and instructors (myself included) are more beneficial when the student is free to talk to the instructor as a friend. It encourages open honesty for more accurate and applicable advice as well as fostering a more useful connection that promotes discussion over lecturing. This openness in thinking is what drives many of the conversations within the honors program, and it is why I think that a leader that focuses on being a listener is one that I strive to be in my future endeavors.

            Throughout the H397 seminar, I’ve learned a lot about fostering student engagement, the intricacies of running a class through lesson plan revision, and effective communication skills both inside and outside the classroom. While these are all invaluable skills, I think that the most impactful aspect was the community among other peer educators that I made while in this class. I had the chance to hear other students doing crazy icebreakers that inspired me for ideas next year, voice my joyful moments and complaints, and bounce ideas between other peer educators. This low stress community of people growing with each other was immensely useful to me both in developing my lesson plans and just simply through encouragement from one another. Many of my self-reflections through this class were actually what I had expected and were similar to many of the thoughts I had last year in terms of self-care and brainstorming/reflecting on activities within my classes. Regardless, I still think sharing it with other peer educators and hearing their reflections were very useful in helping me develop my own mindset as a leader.

            In other future student leadership positions, I hope to apply my experience in adapting my communication and teaching based on the people I am leading to make them feel the most comfortable around me as an equal. I firmly believe that students work better academically when they feel as though they are rooted in a community, whether it be struggling through ochem or knowing that they will have the chance to go out for lunch with their friends after an academic event. This is why I try to apply this philosophy of teaching in my other leadership positions as outreach director in Grey Matters and co-president in GlobeMed. I would argue that what I’ve learned in teaching in H100 is even more crucial in the context of a club because there is one additional hurdle of even getting people to voluntarily stay in the club, and I’ve observed that establishing a community is the best way to do this. In other words, honors students are required to take H100 so most student will show up regardless, but that is not true for my clubs where people can simply leave. In short, my main takeaway from this quarter is the importance of making community and tailoring it to the specific needs of the people in the group, which is my goal to focus on for the rest of my college career and beyond.