#9 - Reflection

I've gone through leadership training and personality testing almost yearly since I took my first leadership class in 7th grade, so when this class was offered as an elective I was really interested to see what more a structured course could bring me. Being on executive boards for student organizations and in Greek Life in college and having life experiences where leadership was necessary, I felt like I knew who I was as a leader even before coming to this class, but 14 weeks later I have a better grasp on who I am in leadership and follower roles. 

The first time I took StrengthsQuest as a sophomore, I completely agreed with my strengths (woo, futuristic, communicator, activator, adaptability) but when I got virtually the same response this year (woo, communicator, activator, adaptability, individualization) I thought it was very different than what I see in myself until I looked further into it. I love being a people-person an d but I don't want that to define me, and that's how I viewed my results from this assessment. Obviously being able to network and make connections with people is an extremely important part of being a professional and a person, so I value those strengths a lot, but I know I can't rely on my people skills to get me where I want to go. 

Talking about identities was really important because I know that my career is going to put me in situations where there will be be people from extremely different areas - geographically and personally. Understanding the privileges I have and the struggles others go through is only going to help me, as well as put my experiences into perspective. I know I have my own, but I also recognize how fortunate I am and a lot of the people I will work with are not as fortunate as I have been in my life. 

I really value the internal reflections we've done in class and through our assignments about our philosophies and plans, they've forced me to come to terms with the things I have to work on to become better but also how to use my strengths and do the things I'm good at and love to do. I'm really happy I took this class and will definitely use the things we've discussed and worked on in order to be a better leader as well as a better follower. 

#8 Peck's Theory

While initially reading Peck's theory, I immediately thought of most of the sports teams I had been a part of over the years, however the more I thought about what experience best exemplifies the stages, I thought of my study abroad trip to the Dominican Republic. The program was not through Ohio State, so there were students from different universities across the country, but the majority of us were on the same flight from Miami to Santiago, so as we found each other in the airport we quickly entered the pseudo community stage. We were all so excited to begin our trip together, everything was great. We sat near each other on the plane, made small talk, and tried to figure out how they did customs checks together.

Quickly we were thrown into activities and class, the chaos stage. We were given a placement test that divided the group into different groups based on our proficiency in Spanish and we decided what classes to take at the university. Every weekend we had pre-planned activities that some of the students were less than thrilled about and caused some friction between the students and our supervisors in the program. We all started to realize who we were going to get along with and our social groups were formed. There were never any real outward issues, but we knew that not everyone was going to be best friends. After some serious bonding time getting lost in the city and taking trips outside of those pre-planned by our supervisors, we took the emptiness path and reached the third stage. We put aside all the things that had divided us and made more of an effort to include everyone because we knew the group was pretty much all we had in this foreign country.


The program only lasted two months, so we didn't have a lot of time in the final stage of being a true, authentic community, but we got there and made sure we made the most of our time together. We made decisions that kept the group together on excursions even if that meant a few people sacrificing their first choice in activities. We danced at clubs and watched the NBA Finals together over free beer courtesy of the New Yorker who owned the bar we frequented. We did our final culture projects in groups, helped each other with the papers we had to turn in for our literature class, and took one last trip to the beach together.

#7 - Target & Non-Target Identities

The conversation about privilege in society is definitely a hot topic in society right now, and I think it is an incredibly important one. As we showed with the chain activity in class, there is so much more to a person than what we think we know by looking at them or even talking to them.

Being a woman in today's society creates struggles, and being a woman in sports creates very unique ones. Recently there has been a picture going viral of a text exchange where a man doesn't believe that a woman can be a baseball fan and challenges her to name the teams that comprise the NL East and she does so with flair, I was recently challenged in a similar way because I was wearing a jersey of my favorite team and a man said, "There's no way that's your jersey, you're not a fan. I bet you can't even name one player on the team." When I did name a few players on the team, he held up his hands in defense said "Okay, okay, no reason to be a bitch about it." This exchange was not the first like this in my life, and I'm sure it won't be the last I experience in my life. Women are called bitches or bossy when we are assertive and when we aren't, we are pushovers or weak, so in almost all aspects of life, we have to walk a very fine line with our interactions with peers.

A non-target identity I am identified as is white, although I am half Latina and my name reflects that, I don't look it, and therefore reap the benefits of being labeled as white. While out late at night at home (which is only about 30 minutes away from Compton, CA) I don't have to worry about being profiled as something that would get me in trouble, for my whole life I am at a lower rate for being arrested and incarcerated, and I am not discriminated against for being a member of a minority race. I am proud to be Latina, but I fully understand that having light skin is a a benefit overall and I just have to laugh it off and accept it when people say, "your name is Hernandez, but you don't look Mexican."