My Leadership and Influence

In my middle school, I want to be a leader no matter in what cooperation task. I don’t know whether this is counted as an obsession, but usually I would do nothing as a leader. I just want a title —— and I usually get it, just like what I got in student union in high school.

Do I really have the ability to lead, in commonly assumed sense? That is, to use language, explanations or charisma to encourage and connect everybody for achieving a common goal. Yes, perhaps I have, but definitely there are at least classmates or students surrounding me who do better on this role. I haven’t experienced anything that forced me to lead others, so I also don’t have the obsession to lead others. Possibly I just want that title in the past?

While, I’m glad to “influence” others. I may walk like a invisible wind, influencing others and letting them know my existence, but I don’t have to lead them to somewhere. Just like everyone, when I influence someone, and he responds my influence, I’ll feel proud. But I only influence passively because in much more time I could only focus on myself. This is crucial for influencing others as well since how can you spread if you have nothing to spread?

When I’m transferred to my current school (NEBS), the first thing I did was to investigate everything in the new environment and, just like everyone, tried to make as many connections as possible. Friends are usually people similar with you. My best friends are classmates who are also transfer students during that first few days. They are also the first ones I’ve met. Therefore, starting from that year, I would try to make me as the first one the new transfer students’ had have met and situate my experiences in their perspectives. I have then become an investigator of any new students in NEBS and the best gossiper in that period.

Recently, I didn’t have that energy to inquire about anymore about new students. Previously, this action usually came from: the vanity to challenge and compete with other new students from famous high schools like wlsao or Pinghe, the desire to make as many friends as possible for broading my social web, and the proudness of becoming the centre among students. Those three reasons vanished and converted to other forms as I got closer to graduation and application.

At the beginning of grade 10, when I was an one-year NEBS student already, a transfer student A came here from a public school. His first meet with me is during our cooperation in student union. He described me as extremely aloof and mysterious at that time (yes that was my intent) but it later turned that I am interestingly crazy. So far we’ve been very close friends for over two years. He said that he has become more opened and crazy under my influence; I think he has learned many things about application from me. He has high charisma in my opinion and he was popular in the school. In my interview to him about myself, I asked him to describe me using four words, three good and one bad or one good and three bad. He said intelligent immediately, and followed by “magnanimous” and “thoughtful” (both are unexpected to me). I considered all those as good words, so I asked him to provide one deregatory adjective: “risky” he said. He admitted he couldn’t find out defect I have anymore. (Is that flattering?) He is a typical “happy and ordinary person” in my opinion, and he would be the most typical and impressive one. He has shaped me because I had never seen such person who finds pleasure in his life so obviously and normally. He plays video games, keep upward desire yet usually forget to do homework, want to reach top 30s but acknowledging that he can only target 50s. If I want to give him four words back, I would say “lively”, “charismatic”, “emotive” and “mundane”. Like “risky”, I return back a neutral word instead of a bad one.

In the middle of grade 10, students in the high school department welcomed one 12-years-old prodigy in that grade 9. I won’t spend words on describing his talents and all we need to know is that he has the unbelievable ability to learn everything in a sec. However, his words and deeds still preserve the innocence and vanity of a 12-years-old child, so unfortunately he wasn’t liked by most students (including me) at that beginning semester. I didn’t know this initially, so I closely talked with him and, more importantly, investigated his talents, grades and strengths. I want to be back to my study then, but he continually haunted me like I’m the only person who know him. As later I would have known, he was strictly reigned by his mother from very young age, and his mother has shown records of physically punishing him to teachers. Those immoral (or we can say uncommon) deeds done by his mother aren’t worth to discuss. But the result is that he didn’t learn how to communicate and survive with “the ways of people”, also desiring for company and understanding. While I don’t know such thing initially, so I abandoned and ignored him intentionally —— just because I was feeling annoyed. As time passed, such conditioning might have pushed him to learn how to speak, to camouflage, to treat everyone and restrain his own vanity. Everyone has learned these, but we’re learned with others and he has learned alone. Perhaps he was changed by me, or perhaps changed by environment. No matter, he has become more amicable, and later transferred new students (who have normal age) like him and treat him as a “nice and friendly prodigy”. Therefore, this difference shows me that he have changed.