My Leadership Experience Throughout my life, I have always been the person who stepped up to take the responsibility of being a team leader. Elementary school was the first environment where I developed my leadership skills. At that time, I always took control and appointed myself to do bigger and harder tasks. I am the type of person who believes things wouldn’t be right if it does not go my way. Leadership for me was only a position where I’m in charge of telling people what to do. But growing up, I learned that leadership is much more than that. Through high school and as for now, university, I developed my leadership skills. Then I realized that leadership is about how we can be the person to step up if any problem arises, how we influence others and be observant with the environment we are in. At high school, we were given a group task to make scientific papers as our final project. We faced many difficulties while working on our project, such as revisions, different arguments about one issue, and we did not have a clear goal or purpose for our project. At this time I am willing to step up and take charge to make decisions for our group. These decisions were not made by me as an individual, but I am able to distribute my friends' ideas and arguments into one decision. There was no designated leader at first, but then they gave me the responsibility to become the leader of the group. I realized, before I was appointed to become a leader, I am able to allocate specific tasks for each individual, also willing to offer help when one is in a difficult situation. I develop my leadership skills by joining organizations. I am now a university student, an athlete, also active in 4 organizations with different focuses and positions. In this case, I should be able to take advantage of my time and have good time management skills. Growing up, I faced situations where I had to make priorities, so then I’m able to finish all of my duties in the positions I am in. There are times where I experienced a loaded schedule and confusion to choose what task I will finish first. The reason behind these situations is because I don't have the ability to make priorities within my work. I can’t decide which is important and which is not. But as time grows, I learned how to prioritize duties so then I have the best outcome as my expectations. In senior year, I was preparing for national competition as an athlete while trying to finish my acceleration school program. It was a non-stop thinking process and work. The idea to choose between one decision and another always came across my mind, such as should I stop my acceleration class and focus on becoming an athlete, or should I focus on finishing school for 2 years and skip this one important tournament. But then I realized, I have been doing these 2 activities for 1 year, and what was the reason for me to stop doing it. The problem was, I do not have the skills to manage the time where I have to focus on both activities, which are finishing my acceleration class and focus training for the tournament. To be able to achieve both goals as a student and an athlete, I made a solution to make a schedule to prioritize my work and activities. By being disciplined about my time, I am now able to achieve both of my goals.
