If there is one word that I can resonate with, it is perseverance. Perseverance is the steady persistence in a course of action, a purpose, a state, etc., especially in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement. I am perseverant and I think that is because I’m stubborn and hard headed. It isn’t easy to influence me or persuade me. If I do something it is for me and no one else. because I WANT to do it. If I want something I go out there and get it because I can’t stand to take no for an answer. It is my biggest disadvantage but also an advantage because I believe that when there’s a will, theres a way. So if you truly want something you will find a way to get it, no matter what.

I believe that perseverance is what I stand for because had it not been for the perseverance I have within myself, I wouldn’t be in my building business leaders class having to write this paper in the first place. In life everyone faces hardships, some face more, and harder hardships than others but, I try to keep in mind that life is not meant to be a smooth, bump free ride. If anything  I don’t want my life to be easy.  I just want the strength to get through it. You can’t appreciate the good without the bad.

A very personal experience I’ve had with the bad where perseverance got me through it was my junior year of high school. My great uncle passed away in April of that year.  Both of my grandfathers passed away before I was born so my great uncle was who I considered to be my grandfather figure. He was in a coma for the last two weeks of his life and in and in an out of the hospital for the heart problems he had before that. So my world felt like it came tumbling down after he passed. Unfortunately it really affected me which in return affected me in school. I was distracted by my own thoughts and mourning and not focusing on my last quarter of my junior year. I don’t know exactly when it happened but I had sort of an euphony and realized I had to make the best of the situation. Instead of letting it get to me I had to get it together and finish the school year strong, not only for myself but for him too. To make him proud. The last couple weeks of school I went from failing almost all of my classes to passing them all with A’s and B’s. I thank my preserving and stubbornness for getting me through all of it.

I learned a lot that year and I feel like I grew up a lot for a 16 year old. I know I’m a fighter and I never give up. Sometimes it is to my disadvantage but usually I can manage to use it to my advantage. It’s hard to beat someone who never gives up. If flowers can teach themselves how to bloom after winter passes, so can you…

So in our 8th class we had to sit with our assigned teams and conquer a scavenger hunt that had 7 stops. Some stops were where we could go to get answers to questions, one that taught us about the honors program, one that taught us about free tutoring and so forth. At every stop we had to take down something that we learned and also take a selfie picture and post it to our social media as proof. What really stood out for me about this class was learning about the honors program because I think I am interested in that for when the time comes that I will be an upperclassmen, although right now that seems so far away. I’ll be making sure to apply what I learned to my studies so I can stay on track for being able to apply to the program next winter. I think what also really made this class special for me was that my group had the opportunity to meet U of O’s president and vice president.

So in class seven we basically got down to the nitty gritty of our values. We had to pick 3 values that resonate with ourselves and then brainstorm examples that illustrate each value which is when I was the most engaged during this class because I got to really think about the values that actually apply to me and other people can notice it too. Then the values that I thought resonated with me, but they really don’t. I think my strongest values are ambition and cooperation. It’s probably too soon for anyone to be able to tell the ambition I have within me but that time will come. For now they can see my cooperation because it’s very obvious to be able to tell that I like to be a team player and keep things running as smooth as possible. I’m going to take these values that I learned about myself and apply them to my everyday life in school and outside of school.

Class 6 was quite the adventure for me. So before class, I had to do my group presentation with my peers for the CICC leaders. It all went smoothly, I think and I’m just glad it’s over with because I hate public speaking and being a freshmen tying to impress these upperclassmen is not my idea of fun. Nevertheless, I;m convinced we rocked it and I’m proud of us since we were the first BBL students to ever accomplish a presentation like that. So after our group presentation, we headed back to class where I learned about different minors that are thinking outside of the box to make us stand out. There are more than enough kids fresh out of college with the same degrees so to see someone with a major in economics and minor in music for example, would definitely be impressive and potentially get that person a job over someone else. Learning that I could minor in sustainability is when I was most engaged in class because I want to combine personal finance or accounting, sustainability, and real estate or interior design somehow to run my own business one day. I know that sounds crazy and it’s something that won’t be able to happen until years dow the road but if you don’t dream big then why dream at all. So, with learning that I can have a unique minor and it would actually benefit me in the long run, I want to take this newfound information and run with it. I want to use that knowledge in my future when picking out my winter term schedule.

For class 5,we had upperclassmen help us out with possible elective classes. I was the most engaged when the upperclassmen were helping us pick electives for the rest of the year because I was able to get help from someone who is majoring with the major I am interested in and I learned what classes do not apply to me so I could avoid them and wasting my time. We also learned about essential qualities of areas of specialization like consequences of choices for accounting. I don’t think I was unengaged during any duration of this class because I learned a lot. I’m applying the help from the upperclassmen to my future class choices.

For class 4, we learned about different learning styles. I was most engaged during seminar when Devon was describing his studying method to us because he seems to really know exactly what he wants in life and has his study habits on lock. His studying method was studying for 50 minutes then taking 10 minutes off to give his brain a break then continuing this process for about 4-5 sessions. I learned that this is actually a great studying technique and I’m going to use it from now on in the future. I was engaged the least when we learned about the methods and routines for other leadership styles since they didn’t really apply directly to me, but I still wrote down my notes on them because you can always learn something new from someone else. From this activity I learned that my leadership style is a planner so my method is outlining notes and my resource for reinforcement is asking for help from my classmates.

Week three in BBL we first started off by listening to a video called “I love my ducks (return of the quack) supwitchugirl” thanks to Jen in an attempt to pump us up for our group projects. It was more amusing than anything but none than less, I like starting class off with a silly joke. First we were all put into groups and had to pick a project that we wanted. The list goes: Project 1: coordinate math study groups for BBL participants, Project 2: coordinate BA 101 study groups for the CBRC, Project 3: execute an awareness campaign for winter BBL seminar, Project 4: execute an awareness campaign of “stereotype threat” for Sheldon Hall, Project 5: present and introduce to the CICC of the BBL program, its purpose, mission and values with the goal of forming a long term strategic partnership between CEO Network and CICC, Project 6: picking our own group project. We had to present a quick presentation and reason as to why our group was deserving of which project we wanted. Brainstorming what to present was where I felt the most engaged. We only had to go up against one other group but we got our first choice in project which was project 5! I was engaged  the least during the presentation of our group because I just sat back and someone else in my group presented. I do not like public presentations so I know that this project will help me overcome that issue at least a little bit and I’m excited for that because I believe it’s important to face your fears and overcome your weaknesses.

For the second week of Building Business Leaders, Andrew was our instructor for the day. The first assignment we had to do was complete the task of counting how many stairs there are in the Lillis Business Complex and we had a time limit of 10 minutes. This part of the class was what I was engaged in the most. I first thought about how to tackle my task and acted quickly after so upon my return to class I discovered that my leadership style is being a planner which I believe is extremely accurate to my personality type. I can’t think of a part of class that I wasn’t engaged in because I was really interested in learning more about the strengths and weaknesses of my leadership style so I can use it to my advantage. I learned that one of the weaknesses of  planners is that they just want to do everything themselves and not get the input of others first and I’m glad I was able to have that identified so that I can work on it now as a freshmen as opposed to having to learn the hard way later down the road. I really enjoyed this class becauseI like being able to know how I work best.

Walking into my first BBL class I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but I right away was able to tell that I had found my second family there. Everyone was so inviting  & it’s rare to find that at “home” feeling at such a big school so I knew right then and there this was the right seminar for me. The first activity we did was listening to Tayah talk about what we would be able to learn and take away during fall and winter term from her class and then we moved on to playing a getting to know each other game. One was where we would all stand in a line and she would ask us a question and we would stand on whatever side of the room we felt identified with us the most. I think this is when I was most engaged because it was interesting to see who we thought similarly to and also differently from. Especially since we are all from different backgrounds and walks of life but at the same time all united by business. I don’t think I was ever not engaged during seminar because Tayah and all of the older generation of Building Business Leaders were very good at keeping our attention. I know I will be looking forward to this seminar every week.