P4
PR, W, C
Whenever I hear
the word “leadership” I get confused. I
cannot think of another positive trait that is so commonly used to describe an
upstanding being. Indeed, considering
how important and powerful leadership really is, it is almost ironic that its
overuse by people in their everyday vernacular has caused it to lose some of
its luster. I so often hear of
leadership this and leadership that that I struggle to accurately pinpoint what
the word actually means. By extension,
my inability to define the word has lead to somewhat of a personality crisis in
my life, namely, am I really a leader? I
like to think that I am, but over the years I have begun to question the legitimacy
of my self-made claim. As I have grown
into a young adult and seen many of the vices of the world first hand, such as
drugs, violence, and how extremely flawed so many humans really are, I feel as
if my own moral code, upon which any leader rests his laurels, has been
breached. In short, my confusions with
the definition of “leadership” and my own sense of ethics has me in a bit of a
rut currently, but I am determined to seek out the issues that are troubling me
in life right now and to use that newfound knowledge to grow my sense of
leadership.
But why do I find
myself so troubled? I can trace my
current condition back to the beginning of last semester, when I first started
taking Microeconomics at UT.
Throughout my life prior, I had
taken classes that I might not have been the biggest fan of, but I had never really
hated a course before. Microeconomics
changed that. I despised everything
about the course, from the unhelpful professor to the obnoxious students who
would ask endless, pointless questions throughout the class. My revulsion at the mention of anything
having to do with economics took a huge toll on my motivation to perform well
in the class. I stopped attending and
began turning to shortcuts to get by.
Soon after, I found myself deep in an academic hole; there seemed to be
no hope of doing well and for the first time in my life, I essentially gave up
on a scholastic endeavor. I know now
that I was to blame for my troubles in Microeconomics, but my frustration at
the time moved me to look for a scapegoat.
And what better to blame than the McCombs School of Business, the
institution that was requiring me to take this class, the college that I did
not even come to UT to attend, my second major, an afterthought. Thus, my anger toward microeconomics brought
with it a systematic hatred for all things business, a problem considering that
my dream at the time was in the business world as the owner of a record label.
Having
a career in the music industry had been my goal since my freshman year in high
school, so to have that taken away was devastating to my psyche. I literally based my entire application
process around working toward a business career with music—indeed, I only
applied to schools in cities with vibrant music scenes, such as Austin, Los
Angeles, and Athens, Georgia. My
CommonApp essay was about how I wanted to work in the music industry, as were
those that I submitted to my ApplyTexas application. I chose to pursue a liberal arts education
along with business during my undergrad years because they go perfect with each
other! To be in the music business, you
have to know yourself and you must know how others operate. Basically, you need to understand human
nature, a knowledge I believe that is best learned via pursuing multiple
different disciplines in college; the broader knowledge base you have, the more
you can talk about with others.
And
so I find myself presently goalless. Ask
anybody who has even a slight knowledge of the essential qualities of a good
leader and I am sure that they will mention that leaders are driven toward
their dreams. Thus, a reevaluation of my
life goals is required. After being so
turned off to the prospect of a life in business, my only other option is to
focus on Plan II while I remain at UT.
And so, next fall I am going to drop out of McCombs and dedicate the
next three years to taking classes that I want to take.
While
dropping out of McCombs is certainly a big decision, it is the only scholastic
decision that I have decided to take regarding my future. The rest of my development into a good leader
must come from within, a complicated task, but one that I am determined to
accomplish. Reading over Newman’s The Idea of a University, a certain
quote stuck out to me: “When the intellect has once been properly trained and
formed to have a connected view or grasp of things, it will display its powers
with more or less effect according to its particular quality and capacity in
the individual” [1]. Key to this
statement is having “a connected view” of things. Before taking World Literature, I might have
simply brushed this phrase off as meaningless.
But if there is one thing that I have learned in the past year, it is
that everything is connected. The
synthesis of the scale and variety of life on this planet is extraordinary, and
something that, after watching Earthlings,
listening to Ram Dass, and reading many articles in our course anthology,
is undoubtedly connected. But the moment
I really realized this was spending time with Jaws at the Taylor Animal
Shelter.
I have and have
had several pets and I have loved each one of them dearly, but interacting with
Jaws was different. For the first time
in my life, I felt myself intimately getting to know another animal that I had
just met. Looking into Jaws’s eyes, I
saw familiarity. His eyes appeared to be
human, and I could easily see the pain that he hid behind his playful demeanor
and slobbering tongue. When it came time
to extend my sympathetic imagination onto Jaws for P2, I poured my heart into
imagining what his life must have been like before he became a shelter
dog. I was shocked at how graphic of a
story I came up for him, and I really hope that he never had to actually endure
such pains. That being said, I know that
what I saw in that dog’s eyes was legitimate hurt. Leaving the Taylor Animal Shelter, I suddenly
became aware of the billions, maybe even trillions of other life forms on this
planet, each of which have their own feelings and stories, just like Jaws.
Truly, as living beings, humans and animals
alike share many of the same emotions and feelings, a revelation that has taken
me nineteen years to figure out. Sadly,
many people fail to see this omnipresent connection, something that I attribute
to the apparent dearth of competent leaders on our planet. But I am confident that my understanding of
the interconnectedness that ties all beings together will help urge me toward
becoming a more capable, confident leader.
And indeed, instead of studying macroeconomics next fall and continuing
to punish myself through McCombs, I am instead taking Plan II Biology because I
truly want to learn more about how living things work. I hope that Dr. Buzkirk does not solely focus
on concrete, scientific facts, but also on the existential issues that trouble
biology: what is consciousness? How did
it come to be? How did tiny particles
thrown into space from exploding stars somehow come together to form this
seemingly impossible miracle that we call life?
I pray that delving into such issues will help me to being hammering my
thoughts into unity.
I received a call
today from a boy I met in a restaurant once while I was at camp. His name is Prin, he is a year younger than
I, and I barely know him; I gave him my phone number last summer because he was
interested in becoming a counselor at Camp Longhorn. After not speaking for almost a year, he
called me today to talk about how depressed he was. At first I was completely taken aback—here
was person who I did not know at all who was confessing something to me that he
likely had never told anyone else. But
after my initial shock transpired, I remembered how I was depressed in middle
school and how devastating and alone it can be at times. For the next thirty minutes, I opened up to
him and gave him the best encouragement and advice I could think of. The fact that someone would come to me for
help makes me feel incredibly happy. Is
this me starting to become a leader?
Only time will tell.
Word Count
With Quotes: 1487
Without: 1448
