Dallas

Leading the Way

The cool, crisp mountain air felt foreign to my lungs. I was far from home, standing in the middle of a field just outside of the campus of the Air Force Academy. I had just met the people around me a few days before, but we already had a bond so strong that it was hard to imagine being away from them. My new friends and I, team Alpha, spent a week at the Air Force Academy for an annual engineering camp and it was the most impactful experience of my life.
    The camp itself consisted of about a hundred top-notch students and twenty counselors. The students were split into groups of ten with two counselors for each team. Every day we had a new engineering related competitive event, including catapult building and house designing, and we camped out in military-grade huts. I found out so much more about my limits and myself after attending this camp. The whole experience forced me to be an independent and critical thinker while putting me in a leadership position. Our team gave everyone a chance to lead by electing a new leader for every activity. The activity that I was in charge of was a shed building event. At first the work and responsibility felt like a wave overwhelming me, but I delegated jobs and leadership roles to people who I felt would flourish in their positions the best. I had to supervise the project for two full days – it was the largest event of the camp – which put even more pressure on me to do well. This amazing leadership opportunity made me realize the importance of obtaining respect and trust as a leader. If my team did not respect my decisions or trust my ideas and me, we could never have obtained first place. 
    I realized just how important respect was during the sprinkler system building event. The leader for the event was the sole girl in our group, so she naturally felt left out. Since she already felt a lack of cohesion, she did not act as though she had much authority. This made her a mostly ineffective leader for the event, and everybody else naturally started to try to take over the leadership role. We obviously had the ability to do well because we beat almost every other team in all the other events, but we came in last this event because we did not have a strong leader. After this, I realized how important a strong, respected leader is to every team, group, or organization.
    This experience improved my character drastically. I now have a greater understanding of what it means to be both a leader and a follower, and I was able to express my love and talent for problem solving. Because I expanded both my knowledge in engineering and critical thinking skills, I hope to share what I have learned with others at the Air Force Academy, be a role model for other students, and bring unique solutions to difficult problems.