No Sugar-Coating

Yesterday was our first official class with Professor Feinberg teaching. It was a relief to see him actually in class. He is quite the professor might I add. He does not sugar coat a single thing. On the first powerpoint slide he presented, it said basically that no one gives a shit about you. My first reaction to this was, "WOW!" I have never had a professor come out and just bluntly say that to us. It was actually kind of a relief because he is putting us into the real world instead of our current fantasy college world where we believe life is so great and people will always be there to hold our hands, like many professors do. Professor Feinberg really emphasized the point of being able to lead our lives so we are happy with our accomplishments in life and basically to have no regrets.
Professor Feinberg also told us that we would be the worst leader he could possibly be until we make him into a good leader. I thought he was doing a pretty good job leading the class yesterday. The point of him doing this is to demonstrate the types of leaders we may encounter after we graduate and are working.
After class yesterday, I actually thought about what he had said in class about living life, leaving a legacy, what we are going to do with our "remaining seconds", and how we can make a difference. I haven't come up with a lot of answers to those thoughts but I have come to some conclusions. As far as leaving a legacy, I do know that I do not really care if I am known to a lot of people. I just want the people who do know me to remember me as a fun, caring, kind, giving, energetic, laid back person. I believe that these things are good to be remembered by. I want my family, friends, co-workers, and clients to be like, "Yeah, I remember when she did this/that for me" or "I remember the time when I did this that would have drove anyone else crazy but she just went with the flow." I want to leave impressions on these peoples lives that will want to make them do things to better themselves and to get the most out of their life. I know for a fact that I have not achieved all of those characteristics but I am going to try my hardest to achieve them.
Another thought I drew some conclusions on after class was about living life. I know that I want to live a successful life and to try to be the best person possible but what about now? I know what I want in the future to be happy but I really don't know what I want now to be happy. So last night I decided to take charge of the present and do things that would make me presently happy and to not worry about the future. The first thing I did was to go out with some of my friends to the bars and had some fun. I decided that at times will stress myself out too much with school and other issues that I forget to "let my hair down" and have some fun and to be a college kid. So, I did that. And let me tell you, it feels good to worry about the present because I know that I am on the right track to being the person I want to be in the future with the decisions I am making in the present. I have taken control of my present and I do not think I'm going to give up that control anytime soon.
I know that the rest of the conclusions to Professor Feinberg's comments will come to me eventually. However, until they do I'm going to keep head up and my eyes open for the little things that are going to come my way and change my life!

Another day without a professor

So I went to class yesterday hoping to be able to actually be taught by Professor Feinberg. I was once again disappointed that he was not there. His TA was there and put in a movie, The Queen, for us to watch and take notes on so we can write our first individual memo.
I noticed once the TA said that the professor was not going to be in class and we were watching a movie, a bunch of people just got up and left. One thing I found disrespectful were the number of people sitting around and talking during the movie. This was very annoying and made it hard to hear the movie.
I was shocked how well the class did accept the TA as the leader of the class for the day. Everyone for the most part listened to what she had to say and then made their decision whether to stay or leave.
The movie we watched, The Queen, was an interesting movie. I have never seen it before and it really showed a different light on the royal family of England. The leadership of Queen Elizabeth was very passive during most of what we watched. I take her to be more of a figurative leader than anything else. I noticed during the movie, mainly during the period when Princess Diana died, that Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, lead the country during the time of grief. He was the one who really wanted to help the country cope with the loss of such a prominent figure. Queen Elizabeth was very passive as what had happened, and felt that it was "a private matter" and the public should not be involved. I realized how cold she was towards her son, Prince Charles, as well as Tony Blair. The movie was quite eye opening and showed a different side of Queen Elizabeth than I had once thought.
After watching part of the movie, it is clear to see that there are many different forms of leadership and people deal with each type differently. I cannot wait to finish the film because it will be interesting to see how her leadership will change, if it does at all.

First Week

The first week of the new semester has just ended, it's exciting to be in new classes and to have a new start to the semester. Most teachers just read through their detailed syllabus and told us whether or not to buy the books for the classes. However, my teacher for my Leadership Strategies class decided to do something completely different. Instead, of going through the motions, he did not show up for class. Instead, he sent someone to represent him. We did not talk about the syllabus or anything. Everyone was really confused about what was going on and a lot of people left after we watched a self-help movie by Anthony Robbins.

On the second meeting for the class, the professor pretended to be a "consultant" for the himself and gave the class a piece of paper that gave us a task. While the class was trying to complete the task he sat towards the back of the room and took detailed notes about who in the class took leadership to get the task done. To cut the story short we "avoided" our task. No one really understood the task and the people who were trying to lead the class seemed to just take us further and further away from the task and they were creating their own. This was so frustrating not only because we didn't complete the task but none of us had experienced a professor do something so outside of the norm.

Anyways, I still have yet to officially meet my professor but I have already learned something. I learned that you can have people who are willing to take charge but are not necessarily good leaders. I also learned that as students we are conditioned to expect things in our classes and when certain things do not occur, such as the professor not showing up or ever introducing himself, etc. students get frantic and become in a way disrespectful and do not want to complete the task at hand. I personally find the professor's style of teaching interesting. This is a good way to show us how valuable a good leader is and also is very eye opening to see how people react to bad leadership.

Well, I really don't have anything else to say so that's all for now. Take it easy.

-Kristen