Creativity !

Personally, I do believe that it is important to be creative. Creativity is an aspect of human life that has been given to us as a gift in order to make life more interesting and enjoyable. Creativity can take any boring idea and give it life and fulfillment. This idea of creativity can link an adult mind to his childhood pleasures and remind one what it means to have fun and let loose. Most often I find that we are too wrapped up in our schedules, meetings, and routined lives that we sometimes forget how to add a little spice or pizzaz into our life. Change things up a little, do things differently. It will help you remember why you wake up every morning and go about your day. The last time i was creative was this past Friday. One of the African-American sororities had a bbq and i attended. I soon gathered around my friends and we all started "vibing" to the boisterous hip-hop and rap music which was playing in the background. One of my friends began to perform a free-style rap, which is basically just an unrehearsed rap which one thinks of on the spot. He rapped for about 30 seconds and then another friend took over and pretty soon, the six of us were all rapping consecutively in what is known as a cypher. I was included in this cypher and being able to come up with impromptu lyrics took massive creative effort. It was not the best rhyme in the world but it was creative nonetheless. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the workshop on creativity due to scheduling conflicts with the 35th Annual African-American Heritage Festival, but I still do have opinions on creativity. In my opinion, anyone can be creative, it just takes the right activity or exercise to make those creative juices flow. Creativity is good for the mind, because it keeps the brain sharp and thinking in angles not normally used. Creativity breaks us out of the routine mindset that we hold each day and allows some free space in order to expand your thinking into new realms of understanding and wonder. Due to the fact that creativity/ innovation is a core component of BLF, I know that understanding this skill and utilizing it will be an effective way to ensure my success in the program and also in life. The more ways that I can utilize this skill the better.

Initiative

Initiative. This word has come up many times in my BLF journey. Dictionary.com defines the word as readiness and ability in initiating action. So in this definition, initiative is not just simply taking action before anyone prompts you to. Taking initiative involves some leg work prior to the initiative event. One must be ready and have prepared themselves to take action. Personally, I feel as if initiative is equivalent to one's drive. Your initiative is what fuels your ambitions and without it, much seldom gets accomplished. We prioritize this concept as a BLF area of focus because of how crucial it is for success. BLF has given us access to a plethora of resources and contacts but without the initiative to use them, they go underutilized. Those who take the initiative to start a process early often win, no matter what that process is in life. The initiative taken by the Young Alumni panel really made me reevaluate some things in my life. It really made me feel as if I was not doing enough right now to prepare myself for my future. One of the young women was handling the assets of a million dollar Station 88 project by the age of 22. I'm 20 right now and I can barely handle the little funds which I currently have access to. Sitting there listening to their stories of what they did in their college years unintentionally created a negative comparison in my mind that basically I'm not doing enough. I should be on a first name basis with doctors and should be reading medical journals and writing blogs on the latest medical breakthroughs and newest technology. I will not let this negative comparison effect me. I've already started making some changes to my life. I've researched some anesthesiologists in the area whom I will be contacting for meetings to simply figure out how they made it. I need to know what they did during college, the classes they took, who they studied under and talked to. This is Initiative. Realizing the area you are lacking and acting putting in effort to rectify it. I will be great. If it's the last thing I do. 

Interview:

I interviewed one of my friends who is working on a research project with three other students. She and her colleagues were just about finished working on the project when two of the students got into a heated argument which turned somewhat physical. Both students refused to finish their parts of the project while the other remained in the group. However, the project still needed to get finished. Therefore, she and the other student took the initiative to collect the data from the bickering students and finish the project for the good of the group. She realized that sometimes life is not going to go your way and that at times you may have to "bite the bullet" and take one for the team. This is what they did. She took the initiative to finish her part of the project and the other two students parts even though it was not fair to her or the other student who helped her. Due to her initiative, the group received a good grade on the research project and she even gave the two arguing students good evaluations. Not only did she take initiative but she was also caring and selfless. 

- KB

Safety First. Then Teamwork. Mostly Teamwork but Wear Shoes in the House

For this teamwork session, I decided to invite my mother, Cynthia Ball, to be my guest for the challenge. Allow me to first start my saying that I LOVED THIS CHALLENGE!!!!! I enjoy cooking and also interacting with my fellow fellows to learn something that i didn't know before or even becoming more diverse so much and this challenge brought all of those things together. My mother and I worked with Beth and her guest, Bob, and Mariam and her father to create a spicy vegetarian chilli and curry chicken over a bed of white rice. Working with my mom as my partner was a very different concept than our normal relationship. I doubt that we have ever done something where we had to work as a team to complete a common goal. We have helped each other over the years in working to achieve various goals but never has it been as involved or intensive as the teamwork challenge. It was a little challenging to work with other fellows and my guest due to the fact that my guest was my mother. Differences in addressing elders was very common to me. I would never call an adult which I just met by their first name but it seemed second nature to beth and Mariam. I am not saying that they were being disrespectful to her, but I definitely noticed a difference in how i addressed Mariam's father and the way she addressed mine. But these are simply differences in how we were all reared growing up. Everyone seemed to work well as a team. After deciding on the dish, Mariam and her father took the lead on this project because they had the most experience making this dish and knew the proper procedure. No one challenged this structure for the good of the team. Mariam definitely took authority which is something I learned from our past challenge that must be done in order to be successful. One person or a small group must take initiative to lead the team. After selecting the entree, tasks were divided up based on cooking experience and relative skill of the culinary arts. Every person had a specific task and the success of our team was dependent on how well each person completed their own task because each small part comes together to make up the meal for the entire team. Therefore, if one area was lacking, it would bring down the score for the whole team. We succeeded in making a delicious meal and working as a team with great communication and team cohesiveness. One part where we failed was in the execution of timing. We took too long prepping the food and we almost ran out of time while plating. I think the value of teamwork comes down to how i described the dish. Everyone's part may seem small or insignificant but in actuality, each section is paramount in the final product. The small pieces are what come together to give the overall product and if some of these small pieces are not handled properly, the entire structure will come crashing down. Taking this knowledge into the upcoming challenge, I will not let myself or my teammates feel as if their work is too small or that it does not mean anything to the group. We all must understand that every task goes towards the overall end result of this challenge and you never know what small step may be the catalyst that sends our team skyrocketing towards new heights and ultimately success.

Metacognition ! Thinking about the Thought We Were Thinking Before We Thought It!

Going into the critical thinking workshop, I did not have many specific expectations. From working with BLF, I have learned to keep an open mind about EVERYTHING and to expect the unexpected. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems and nothing is ever as surface deep as it appears. I was very excited to go to Museum because analyzing art has always been a favorite activity of mine. After going through the workshop, I learned to look at everything deeper than the surface. If one takes the time to sufficiently analyze something, he could probably find a much less superficial meaning than the one that is present. The woman's comment about how most people only take about 7 seconds to view each piece really resonated with me about my own world. One thing that I learned, which is pretty consistent with the aforementioned concepts, is that I do not take the appropriate time to properly analyze the world around me and that I could probably find more beauty in the world if i did. I am almost positive that I was able to say anything and everything about the workshop during the workshop, due to the fact that I was very active and talkative during the session. But during the workshop, a strong appreciative emotion hit me hard! I'm not sure why, but at that moment, I realized just how blessed I am to be in a premier leadership program such as Buckeye Leadership Fellows. All of the resources available and the connections which could potentially be made are so imperative that one would kill for such an opportunity! I have numerous opportunities to make and maintain many connections with so many other students and alumni through this program. I can truly say that this program has impacted my overall college experience in a positive way! I feel as if BLF values Critical Thinking so much because they are trying to develop us into the best leaders we can possibly be. Being a great leader involves being able to think fast on one's feet when times are not going as planned. One must also be able to think abstractly and outside of the box. Most times, in order to achieve something, one must contemplate an idea in a way which it has never been thought about before. BLF wants us to be innovators, therefore we must be able to think like innovators. All of these lessons will be utilized in the upcoming challenge because I am going to take my new pattern of thinking and analyzing to into the forefront of the challenge. These things will be used when the initial planning and executing of the challenge is taking place.



Part Dos!!!

 This scene here is the path that I walk across every day when I am going to class. I will use the ODIP method to analyze this picture.

Observe:
I see wet decaying leaves on the ground. The air is very cloudy. It appears as if it had rained recently. The trees are still bare and the grass looks muddy and soft. Many students are walking across the yard and it appears as if there is an increase in traffic influx at the corner of the intersection.

Describe:
The ground looks as if one would slip and fall if he were running too fast. Someone would sink into the marshy grass if he stepped on it. The ground is saturated with water and very moist. The scene is gray and appears very sad and depressing. The glass structure to the left is like a prizm that was placed in the ground.

Interpret:
The area gives me a very depressed feeling, especially on this day. The picture is gray and wet and cold and simply gives an overall unwelcoming feeling. However, the glass prizm on the left side makes one think of innovation and what could possibly be done to the land to improve its current state.

Prove:
I do not exactly remember how to use this point in the ODIP system but i  feel as if this is the section where we reveal what exactly was going on when this photo was taken. I had just gotten out of a midterm, and the weather was particularly bad on this day. I was already overwhelmed by the midterm and the thought of all the work i still had left to do and i believe that this was incorporated into the picture and was essentially carried over into my interpretation.

360 FEEDBACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My initial reaction to the assessment was very docile and relaxed. I was not shocked by what my teammates selected, because I had already had somewhat of a similar ideal of myself about the challenge. I was not able to be as involved as I would have like to have been due to scheduling conflicts and my faulty ability to juggle multiple big projects at once. There was a major discrepancy between what I rated myself and how my teammates rated me. I believe that this discrepancy came from the fact that I was not able to truly open up to my teammates and reveal what I was capable up due to the fact that I was not able to be physically present for alot of the meetings which we had. I knew what I was capable of and knew my qualities but my team was not able to recognize that which cause a major gap in the two scores. I loved the experience of soliciting verbal feedback from my teammates. I think our inability to do this initially is one of the factors which lead to our shortcoming. One thing which i felt from my team was that we were afraid to insult anyone or step on anyone's toes. Therefore, everyone took some sort of a passive role and was not open as much as we should have been. I have a tough skin and am not really hurt or offended by much, so taking feedback from my teammates was relatively easy. It seemed as if they were still reluctant to be one hundred percent honest, with the exception of Jenny, but after we had a good dialogue flowing, everyone had opened up and was accepting of everyone's opinion. We MUST begin to practice this within BLF if we are ever to success in becoming the leaders in which we have the potential to be. It is critical because feedback is the only way we are able to evaluate ourselves unbiasedly. With the feedback I received from my  teammates, I plan to incorporate that into my daily life and especially into this next challenge.

Happiness

Describe 3 experiences or environments that have been a source of happiness for you. What about them made you happy and what impact did that source of happiness have on your life?


As of late, one thing which has made me extremely happy has been being with my girlfriend Kia. She and I have truly been through many ups and downs in the short eight months in which we have been dating, but I believe that she has shown me what it really means to love someone. She does make me angry and we fight at times, but in the end we are happy and that's what matters. This source of happiness has impacted me in such a way that I no longer have to look for something I was seeking. I found love and now I'm just looking to build upon that for the future. Another source of happiness i have found is simply being here on campus. I am ABSOLUTELY INFATUATED with The Ohio State University and all that it has to offer. When I look across campus, all I see is opportunity. There is so much that is capable of being accomplished and achieved and I am going to tackle it all! Being here and seeing all that OSU has to offer has made me strive for greatness and has encouraged me to take full advantage of every opportunity presented. Never turn down any opportunity, even the smallest ones, because you never know what one conversation could do for your life. I've learned so much about life from being here and I want to learn as much as i possibly can. The last experience I will discuss here which has been a source of happiness for me has been being in church. I am a Baptist who has attended New Salem Missionary Baptist Church my entire life. The feeling that I get when I listen to my pastor speak or the choir sing fills me with a joy which I can't describe. It's as if nothing can go wrong in the world and I am in a place of pure happiness. Church has definitely been a place of strength and peace for me. Recently, I have not been going as routinely as I have in the past, but I have started attending more regularly as of late and I am loving the happiness that I used to have all the time.

Challenge Check In

When it comes to Team First Gear, I believe that my entire team has been motivated to complete our task and to be great! Even though we all have individual talents and strengths, we have come together and put these talents collectively into one pot and stewed up a meal of success. Jennifer Mayer is one of the most motivating people I have ever met. In my opinion, she has a done an excellent job taking the lead on this project, especially when it has come to the videos that had to be made. She has great skill with a computer and video editing which has contributed to some of our success thus far. Libby brings a hardworking and jovial spirit to the team. She is always laughing or giggling about something which adds a comic relief to the stress of this challenge or to our meetings and videos. Jessica has a great go-getter spirit and a drive that is unmatched. She has been great with contacting different sources and seeking out help. Finally, Ian is amazing at using his resources to help the team. He was able to reach out to multiple contacts through one main contact that sent out our email. He is also very hardworking but I feel as if our entire team is hardworking and motivated towards success. I feel as if we have meshed as a team and work great together. Often, we recognize others for doing a great job verbally. Everyone receives recognition so that we can stay motivated as a team. Any time someone has made a new development, the team is quick to shower them in thanks and also collaborate on any ideas they may have for that person. Recognition has not been a problem for Team First Gear.