Leadership: The Individual's Choice by Austin

Leadership: The Individual's Choice by Austin - March 2015 Scholarship Essay

Leadership, one of the fundamental principles of responsibility, is absolutely essential to becoming successful in college. Honed leadership skills ultimately correlate to the success of the individual throughout his/her collegiate career. Without these skills, college becomes more difficult; however, in order to argue this, a thorough definition of leadership must be explored. Leadership can be defined as the combination of three main skills: integrity, humility, and responsibility. Without honing these three essential aspects of leadership, success in college becomes all that more difficult.

Before, examining these three elements, one must be able to understand why leadership is so important to one’s collegiate success. These elements—integrity, humility, and responsibility—all lead to not only academic success, but overall success in college as well. In order to understand why leadership is essential to an efficacious college experience, one must accept the importance of these three constituent facets.

Integrity, or the ability to act in an honest manner, is the first essential part of leadership which, when mastered, correlates to success in college. Without integrity, many of the organizations on collegiate campuses could not have been formed. Whether it is the creation of the Ultimate-Frisbee Club or the initiation of a new honors society such as Thiel College’s VAQ, the Humanities Research Honor Society, integrity had to be emitted by the leaders of these organizations. Without this element, these organizations would have failed from their conception.

Collegiate success would also not be possible without the second facet of leadership: humility. Humility is essential to the everyday life of a leader. Whether through classwork or organizational leadership, humility or modesty is vital to a successful collegiate career. Think of it this way, if a student was arrogant in the classroom and boasting that he or she knew more than the other students and even the professor, the student would have a hard time making friends and would be treated harsher by his or her peers than the student who works as a team on a project or initiates a study group for a midterm exam. In an organizational setting, a humble leader would take the ideas of the group and help guide them towards what is best for the respective organization; whereas a boastful or arrogant leader would attempt to dictate every aspect of the organization, thereby making the other members feel insignificant and eventually causing membership to drop. Without humility, the life of a college student would be lonely, harsh, and virtually unsuccessful.

Finally, the last tier of leadership, responsibility, is, perhaps, the most crucial facet which correlates to collegiate success. By having this trait, a student inherently becomes diligent in his or her studies, organizational tactics, and even in making friends. By displaying that the individual can be relied upon, like a leader in an organization, the student is able to help grow organizations across campus and still be effective in the classroom. Without this skill, overall success in college dwindles. As a student’s educational responsibilities wane, so, too, does the student’s grades. After this responsibility is absent, organizational tactics begin to crumble as the larger student body begins to distrust the student due to his or her lack of responsibility. Without this last trait, student collegiate success is nearly impossible.

Leadership is the key to a student’s success in a collegiate setting. Without the traits of a leader—integrity, humility, responsibility—a student cannot succeed in an academic or organization setting. Grades will drop and friendships will dwindle if a student forgets these essential leadership traits. College can either build the next leaders of the United States, or cause them to fall, crumbling into the abyss of students who did not heed these three traits. The choice is individual and is essential to successful collegiate career.