Colorado Leadership Retreat: A Personal Analysis

Flashes of beautiful wildlife and unbelievable mountain ranges filled my eyes as our youth pastor showed us the destination of our next mission trip, Yellowstone National Park. I remember looking at these pictures and thinking there was nothing more I wanted to do than see this amazing wonder. I wanted to be fully one with nature and experience it with some of the people I loved most, my youth group. While planning for this trip, I had no idea that by the end of it I would have hiked eighteen miles into the deep backcountry of Yellowstone with a forty-two pound pack on my back. That I would have slept outside with only a simple tarp over my head and a can of bear spray by my pillow. That I would have helped remodel a dilapidated home so children living in extreme poverty could have a place of safe haven. That by the time I returned home, I would have a new desire to seek adventure and help people in need.

I’ll never forget how frightened and scared I was the day we left Nauvoo. We left our beautiful home and all of our possessions behind as we began our trek West to the Rocky Mountains. We didn’t want to leave but the persecution had become so bad from the people who hated our religion that we had no choice. They burned down our temple and stole our livestock and reports of members of our church being assaulted or killed were becoming more and more frequent. After my father’s business had been broken into and his printing presses destroyed, we had no other option but to leave. So we sold all the possessions that we could and bought a team of oxen. We loaded everything into the wagon, and started a journey that would last over a thousand miles

It was day two on the Appalachian Trail. The rich robust smell of pine permeated the air. The Sparrows caroled, and the soothing warm glow of the sun, warmed my body as the elevation increased. I was completely engulfed in nature. As the trail progressed, a couple friends and I reached the first cairn. We were 500 feet from the summit of Mt. Avery. We soon took our last steps, lowered our bags, and shared smiles. Immediately we were taken hold of by the ear ringing silence. Not a gust of wind, nor a chirp from a bird, it was complete serenity. As we took in the view I realized something that changed me completely. I was

Choosing fun over work, I pressured them to let me go, and they reluctantly said yes. We went by tour bus; on the way, I played games on my phone, talked with siblings and church friends, prayed, and sang hymns. We stayed in a Hampton Inn, and enjoyed a good night’s sleep after an exhausting day of touring different towns and eating different foods. The next day, we set out to the falls themselves. The adults let us choose if

One major experience that has shaped me as a person would be the decision to join FFA my freshman year. FFA has allowed me many incredible opportunities and experiences these past four years.

It is interesting how sometimes it is he smallest decisions that can change your life forever. For me it was deciding to enter a submission in the VFW Voice of Democracy competition that changed the course of my life. Achieving success in the contest and the opportunities I experienced afterwards led me down a different path than I first planned and was a call to action to pursue a career in public

This experience truly defined who I became and who I am now as a leader. I

An experience that has made a profound impact on my life was when I directed and completed a community service project to fulfill a requirement for the Eagle Scout Award in the Boy Scouts of America. In order to competently act as coordinator for this service project, I had to develop both my interpersonal communication and leadership capabilities to a proficient level. Besides improving my professional skills, this project gave me the opportunity gain hands on experience working with groups of people who had varying skill levels. So, not only did these skills allow me to complete the project successfully, they have also proven incredibly useful throughout my academic career.

Back in my country, a seemly simple but actually meaningful event changed my perception of life forever. I was twelve years old when my science teacher told me: "if anybody in this life ask you to run a mile, go ahead and run two. Because in order to gain people's notion that you are capable of achieving something you have to overcome their expectations". Such words became since then, the keystone for my life. Three years later, these worlds materialized in what i know for being a critical part of my story. I moved to the U.S without a significant training in

I have had multiple experiences in the past few years of my life that have greatly impacted me and changed the way that I go about life. During my Junior year, I learned that I had been granted the opportunity to attend the California Boys State program. This program took place during the summer after my junior year, and it was one of the greatest experiences I have ever had. I met hundreds of new people from all across the state. During the program, I made many great friends, and I still talk to a group of around fifteen people from the program. While talking to other people from what seemed so far away, it really opened my eyes to the scale of the entire country, or the world. For once, I truly realized that everybody has their own problems and their own life. Every person that I talked to had a different story and it was very stunning.

Every little mistake and success story in my high school years qualify as a factor to my personal change but by far the biggest experiences were definitely my efforts of maintaining a good GPA and the participation in the National Honor Society. Trying to achieve and keep up with my GPA was harder than it appeared but due to all the effort I can anticipate that whatever the future has in store for me I will be ready to endure. Not only was the experience of my GPA life-changing but it was also the door to bigger opportunities, one being the National Honor Society. Although I doubted myself almost every step of the way I can truthfully say the experience was transformative in the sense that it taught me morals I will cherish throughout the rest of my journey.

I moved to the state of Delaware and I had been sitting “dormant” for about a year and I was doing my own thing. Then, one day I was going for a motorcycle ride and I saw “volunteers needed”. It was a marquee board outside of a firehouse in Little Creek Delaware. I decided to stop and see what they had to offer or should I say now what I had to offer them. I stopped in and talked with the chief and I decided to give it a shot. I never realized how rewarding it was going to be. May of 2013 changed my life for the better. It made me realize I had purpose in life and a passionate career to pursue.

College changed me. Ok, well maybe not college in the traditional sense but, the high school Ridley College certainly did. When I told my parents that I wanted to apply to Ridley College as supposed to continuing on the route that I was on and going to my local high school something changed for them. For the first time, at least to them, I was branching out and making decisions for myself. Up until that point I had always just sort of quietly done what was expected of me and never really branched out or stepped off of the beaten path into the unknown. Yet, coming out of elementary school I was fed up with being normal. I wanted to be extraordinary and, in order for that to happen I knew that I was going to have to change things up. I

When I read “Salvation” by Langston Hughes. I realized that everyone of us has something that had changed our life. As for me, my life changed when I first came to the USA. It was not just my life that changed, but everything about me had changed. The Language barrier and a new life in the USA have changed me the most.

Throughout this semester my leadership skills have not only grown, but changed inside and outside of the classroom. One of the main contributing experiences to this was the Impact Leadership Village’s Fall Retreat. Throughout this retreat we were put through other exercises that made evident to us what kind of leaders we were, what our strengths and weaknesses were, and what was most important to us and how that affected us as leaders. Two of the exercises that we underwent at the retreat have stuck with me throughout the semester. One of these exercises was made for us to better understand what was most important to us. We were given 16 sheets of paper in which we wrote our 4 favorite physical objects, our four favorite people, our four favorite non-physical things, and the four things we hope to accomplish or have later on in life. Slowly we were told to discard each of these things and pretend that these things ‘never had existed’ until we were left with one piece of paper. By the end of the exercise I was holding back tears. My one last piece of paper said the word ‘God’ on it, but in order to have God I had to give away my brother’s name as well as my dad’s name. Realizing how much they meant to me and being told to take this exercise very seriously, I began to weep. Thinking I was the only one crying, I looked up to see there was not a single dry eye in the circle. We went throughout the circle discussing the hardships of discarding the pieces of paper, how we came