Pictured are six images of reminders on my iPhone. The top row consists of three reminders that are what I consider “must complete” items. The first picture shows that I have an LDR paper due tomorrow, with the reminder set for today at 10:00 am. The second is reminding me of a group meeting I have at 3:00 pm that day. I set an alarm for 9:00 am for that task. The third non-negotiable item I have pictured is “Work @5”. My alarm was set for 4:30 pm that day. On the bottom row there are three more pictures, all labeled “Sacrifices”. The first reminder is for the “Gym @7”. The second is “Hang out w/blu”. The last image in the row is “SLEEP”.
My experience with LDR 101 and school in general has taught me valuable things about leadership. One of those is time management. I have never had great time management skills so coming into college was stressful to say the least. I had told myself that I wouldn’t procrastinate and that I would do all my work way before the deadline so that I wouldn’t have to worry about it. Turns out that’s easier said than done. I had so many things consuming my time that, in my head, seemed so much more important that writing that paper that was due tomorrow morning at 9 am. At some point I knew that I would have to put all that aside and put school first. I was forced to do just that with group projects. Specifically the WomanHouse project in LDR 101. With that project we had to read, research, and create a presentation based on WomanHouse, a revolutionary feminist art project from the 1970’s. The project forced me to consider other people and their grades, not just myself. For this final project I wanted to show how I learned to better manage my time and prioritize my activities. I chose to use my phone as the medium because that’s what I used for time management during the semester. I set alarms and reminders, and checked the time constantly. By literally setting reminders for things that I would have during school, I am giving the best, most accurate representation of my time management and leadership. The top row of “must complete” items are all labeled “School” or “Work” and they all have the urgent exclamation marks attached to them. This shows that they are at the top of my priority list. Below are the three recreational or negotiable activities. Every one of them is labeled “Sacrifices” and are without those urgent exclamation marks which shows that these are things that I have to sacrifice for school. I might not be able to get to the gym every day or get a consistent 8 hours of sleep. This is a concept I had to come to terms with. For the project we were required to meet with with a tutor in the CWS which meant that all of the members of our group had to coordinate schedules. We also had multiple meetings to work on our project and I realized that I needed to be flexible because there were four other peoples’ schedules we had to take into account. Part of being a leader is being able to make sacrifices. Those sacrifices for me were sleep, the gym, time with friends, etc… Knowing what’s important and considering others when making those sacrifices is what made me a leader with the WomanHouse group project.
LDR 101 focused heavily on leadership and what that meant to us as individuals. Leaders don’t look the same and leadership doesn’t either. The StrengthsFinder test told us that even those that don’t have the personality traits typically associated with being leaders, are just that. What I learned was that to be a leader takes sacrifice. You have to do things you don’t want to do and push aside the tempting activities so that you can support those around you. That’s what I did with my time management and prioritization. I put school first and pushed the rest aside for later. That’s what makes me a leader.
