During this school
year, we are going to be creating a personal project, in which we will be able
to explore any topic that is interesting to us and that we will enjoy working
with. I have been thinking about what I will choose to work with, and I have
thought about two different topics that I am very interested about. One of them
would be art, and I would love to have a project related to drawing and
painting, since I have always enjoyed art and I’m not having art classes this
year, so it would be a great opportunity to be in touch with a talent I love
working with. The next topic I considered would be something related to biology
and medicine, since it is another topic I really enjoy as well as something that
interests me greatly, to the point I am considering becoming a doctor after I
graduate. I’m not sure which one I will choose to work with, or if I might join
them and create art inspired in biology and medicine related subjects. I still
have to think about it and see if any of those ideas will mature to something
more concrete.
I’m very excited for
this new class, hoping it will help us develop new ways of studying and working
in which we are able to use thing we are better at. I also hope I will be able
to choose a topic and create a great project that will inspire me and that is
will be something I will enjoy working with. The last thing that I hope this
class helps me with is my speaking skills, and my tendency to being shy. I hope
that since it is about leadership, this class helps me become a more ‘vocal
leader’, so I have the possibility to be any kind of leader, form the one who
inspires to the one who spreads the ideas.
"In our first two weeks, you have read several articles, seen several
videos and been engaged in several discussions related to the concept of
academic leadership. At this point, and in your own words, what does the
concept mean to you? What subjects or interests do you have a sophisticated,
intellectual understanding of that you may want to turn into a major academic
project in this class? How do people sometimes abuse academic knowledge to manipulate
others? How would you feel if someone used your work to manipulate other (as
Jared Diamond claims Mitt Romney has)? How can creating academically
sophisticated, intellectual leaders help prevent such people from taking
advantages of others the way they do? how can this created a stronger
democratic society?"
Academic leadership
will teach us how to be great leaders, by our own standards and by using what
we are good at. It will allow us to understand how to improve our talents in a
way that will benefit both ourselves and others, since it will allow our capacity
to work with a group to be improved, facilitating future projects. We were also
able to learn how leadership doesn’t always come from the head managers from
companies, and just because you have a good job doesn’t mean you are a great
leader. Something that was told is how
leadership can come in any way and from any person, by learning about several
leaders, and how they used their leadership in situations they were confronted
with. For me this is very important since I’m not entirely comfortable with
being a leader that stands in front of a big group and tells people what to do.
I would just rather be a ‘silent leader’ that instead of telling others what to
do, inspires them to do things by performing them himself.
I believe that a
leader is not created alone; one example is the Dancing Guy, who would not have
been a leader if others did not follow him. But that is not the only way in
which a person needs more help in order to become a leader. Another example
would be the leader’s ideas; because even though a leader might have a set goal
or idea, he will, or already has, been inspired by others. Those who have or
will inspire the leader should also be considered leaders, since even though they
did not go out and state what needed to be done; they somehow showed someone
else that, and ended up motivating that person.
"A leader always sets the trail for others to follow"
As this picture says: “A leader always sets the trail for others to follow”. In this way, the person who inspired someone else to star leading is also a leader, because they helped create the trail that should be followed. Even though I believe that ‘silent leaders’, as I would like to call them, are important, I also agree that the leaders that state their leadership by going out and actually leading people with their words are as important, since without a ‘vocal leader’, which will be their name, several actions would not have been taken, and ideas would not have spread. So, both the ‘silent leader’ as well as the ‘vocal leader’ are needed for something to happen, but both of them are leaders and both are able to show leadership, only in different ways, that please their personalities and talents.
We have also learned how people
sometimes abuse academic knowledge to manipulate others by misrepresenting
ideas and using them to support their ideas, this way using an illegitimate
source of support. One example is Mitt Romney, who thought that by using Jared
Diamond’s argument, it would only support his idea, but against his will, his
representation of Diamond’s book only harmed him and his idea. If my ideas are
any day, misrepresented like what happened in this case between Mitt Romney and
Jared Diamond, I would be very offended, since my ideas would be used wrongly.
Also, I believe I would do something similar to Diamond’s response, since
instead of confronting the person who distorted my ideas, rephrasing them and explaining
what I really meant would have a better result.
This is where academic leadership would fit, since a professional with
this knowledge would know how to deal with the problem, without making a fool
of himself, and instead, by re-stating his idea and explaining how it was
misunderstood. If more people were academic leaders, then I think mistakes and
misrepresentations like this one would be less common, and people would know
how to support their ideas without damaging another person’s word, or how to
protect their idea with strong and stable arguments.
