I like the quote by Eleanor Roosevelt. It tells us that we are responsible for our lives and responsible for the end product. She is telling us regardless of our upbringing we have the ability to become who we want to become in the future. I think this is encouraging, especially for those brought up in bad neighborhood. I do apply this to my everyday life. Since I come from a first generation family, my parents did not have the chance to go to college in the U.S, and always remind us that we came to the U.S so we can take advantage of the opportunities of bettering our lives. I apply this quote to my everyday life because I know I have the opportunity to take advantage of resources my parents didn't have in their country.

On the last reflection meeting, that took place on February 22nd, I had lots of confusion. I enjoyed the experience of the conversation but I also felt confusion. I think it was because I still don't know what to identify myself with. 

I found the matrix of oppression depressing. This is because most of the social categories I identify myself with are either the targeted group or the border social groups the targeted. According to the matrix of oppression I should as a target group but I feel this to be true mostly with race.

I can relate this to my leadership experience by encouraging others to not fall into the idea of oppression. I could encourage other to not be discouraged if they fall into a targeted social group. I believe many of us in STARS fall into 2 or more of the targeted, but we do not allow it to stop us from achieving higher positions. All of us as leaders can encourage other to become involved in movements and to achieve higher aspiration, regardless of if we fall into a target or border social group.

After reading the article, I felt that I should start meditating. I have tried to meditate before but I find it difficult. My reaction to meditation is exactly what the article described, I begin to panic and feel as if I'm wasting my time. I also do not see a benefit and feel like a hippie. When I was in cross country our assistant coach tried to make us mediate during practice as we began to go into our competitive season. I did not like it at all, and refused to do it. I felt that our time could be better spent. Some of the girls did like it but these were the slower lazier girls on the team. So ever since then I think I've associated laziness with mediation. I also did not understand how our assistant coach expected us to just sit there while our competition was working out on the track or doing core. Luckily, our head coach understood and only forced us to mediate once and then allowed us to work on other core when the others meditated. Although the article mentions makes it seem as if ten minutes is not much, in reality it truly is. In the ten minutes, we would have meditates we could have ran  a warm and then began our workout. Here at school, in ten minutes I can type up this blog, finish half of a reading assignment or have lunch. The closest thing I have gotten to meditating is to listening to relaxing music while I get ready on day I have late class.

Last week at Family Matters my mentee and I continued looking at high schools. I also learned about the selective high school process from my mentee. The process put lots of pressure on these students at such a young and i don't think that is healthy for them, because it makes them feel like failures at such a young age. I did my best to encourage her and tell her she could easily get into the school if she worked hard and continued to pay attention and respect her teacher. I have also noticed many of these kids feel the need to be against authority or appears as if they don't respect them. My mentee talked about how much she hated her teacher and talked back to him. I told her regardless if she liked him or not, she had to respect him. I tried put it in terms that made sense to her but I still don't think it went through to her.

For my spring break I don't have plans other than to rest and study for the test I have right after spring break.

STARS LEAD #4

"Now is the acceptable time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or futre year. It is today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow. Today is the seed time, now are the hours of work, and tomorrow comes the harvest and the playtime."

- W.E.B DuBois

After reflecting upon the quote I believe DuBois is right. He is telling us not to waste time or hesitate on opportunity that can better our lives. He is encouraging us to be outgoing and to put ourselves out there.   I would like to think I do apply this to my everyday life, but I do not. I seems to always hesitant to making decisions. Which is a habit I need to break. 

I enjoyed our gathering on Friday. I was glad I was able to meet up with the other members and just bond. 

I agreed with the author's argument of saying technology is a distraction, but I don't necessarily believe it is ruining our lives. My phone is definitely a distraction for me. When I do my homework I sometimes have to leave in room so I won't be tempted to check it.  When I do homework on my computer I block social media websites so I don't become distracted for longs periods of time. Saying this I would be ten times more productive without my phone. To increase our interactions among each other requires technology at some times. For example, right now to increase interaction with my family, I rely on technology to communicate with them. I also believe that there is a time to put away your technology and pay attention to the people in front of you. I have a pet-peeve of people constantly checking their phones while they are eating with other people. This makes it seem like the person is not paying attention and they are not interested in the other person, and that's rude. 

I believe the article was accurate. I can relate to it because if I have a bad day or bad week, it always gets better sooner or later. I have never really thought about it, but I figured "that's just the way things go. ". I never thought to consider it as a pattern of the universe. To maintain some sort of balance I have to have a checklist of things I need to do, even for the simplest task. Having a checklist makes me feel like I'm accomplishing things in my life. My main accomplishment is to just have better time management skills. I believe once I improve my time management skills things will fall into place. 

STARS LEAD #3

STARS COMMUNITY EVENT 

I found the STARS event to be interesting. I don't think I have ever reflected on my identity or even thought of how I would identity myself. I believe we can our identities and others by not being ashamed of our identity and educating others on our identity/situation. After attending the event, I would like to be able to reflect more often on my identity. The STARS LEAD group and support each others identities by being understanding and listening to each others. Identity connects with our work with Family Matter because we are being mentors to the children, and as mentors we are to support their identities and assist in the development in their identities.


FAMILY MATTERS  

I enjoy volunteering at Family Matters. I love working with my mentee/tutoree because she is very independent and seems very mature. I was surprise and the amount of kids that showed up to Family Matteres especially since they have such a limited area. A goal I do plan to achieve by the end of the semester is to develop a strong relationship with my mentee, be a positive role model, and be someone they can contact in the future if they ever need help.


SCHOOL TO PRISON PIPELINE

After reading the article I became more aware of the issue students in public schools are facing. I came from public school in a small town, and even i was able to find similarities in between the article and my high school. When you start to think of your loved ones that do go to public high school you become even more worried and want to take action. As a STAR Leader, I'm not sure we can make drastic change, but we can take small actions which could lead to great impacts in the community. For example, just realizing there is an issue and becoming educated on it is a great start. With this new information we can educate other who might have the authority/power to help us take greater action. I believe being there for other young students is important as well. Some students don't have a support team or someone to encourage them along their way to let them know their options are open. By just volunteering at Family Matter, I believe we are making a difference. I think that by mentoring at Family Matters we are practicing servant leadership. We are also giving ourselves opportunities to develop our servant leadership skills. We will develop our listening skills by interacting and helping our mentees with any issue they may have, in this process we will also be developing the characteristic of empathy. Helping mentees through problems will also assist in developing healing.

MENTOR

The only mentor I have is my STARS mentor. I really like my relationship with her. She is a good listeners and always seems interested. She's encouraging, as well. I think she makes a good mentor because she not judgmental and is really sweet. I haven't reached out to anyone else to be a mentor. I do want to find a professor to be a mentor though. Although, my academic advisor has served as a mentor in the past. I do hope to find a mentor, preferably a professor in my major by the end of my sophomore year. 

STARS LEAD #2

"To serve is beautiful, but only if it is done with joy and a whole heart and a free mind."
   -Pearl S. Buck 

I love this quote. This is because I have always been a strong believer in people doing thing with meaning. I know this doesn't make sense, but I'll give an example to try to explain. 

Example:

    A person should not attend a university and major in something they dislike simply because they believe they will make a fortune in the future, but then hate their job. There is not point in putting yourself through that torture. Major in something you believe in and put the true effort that is deserved. 

I believe the same when it comes to volunteer work. Don't help someone one out of pity. Do it because you enjoy helping them or in the cause and you truly enjoy helping people. If you are going to put your time and effort towards something do it because you find joy out of it and with a whole heart. If not don't bother, stay home. 

I enjoyed the Servant Leadership workshop. I like workshops because I'm fascinated with listening to others opinions, I just hate sharing my own.

After reflecting on the workshop I believe I have the following characteristics in servant leadership: 

• Listening
• Empathy
• Stewardship
• Commitment to the people

The ones I hope to obtain? Well, all of them. 

I honestly don't know about my dream job. All I know is that I want to do something with internationally helping third world countries (hopefully Central America). Ideally, I would like to dedicate sometime to working with the PeaceCorps, even if it don't get paid. I used to want to be a social worker but after taking the intro coarse I discovered it's not for me. I guess right now I'm just exploring my options. 

I thinking serving is a beautiful thing. I didn't discover this until last year. I had applied for NHS at my high school, but only to build up my resume. Turns out there are many were many requirements to stay in the program, volunteer work was one of them. We were require to dedicate at least 6 hours a month to tutoring at the local middle school. I wasn't excited about this at all. I thought I was going to hate it and I have never been the type to love kids. Turns out I loved it. Serving gives you the opportunity to work with people from different backgrounds and stories. Listening to these stories gives you insight on what else is out there. Serving others is also a two way street. As cheesy as this sounds, you do find warmth in your heart when you help someone, especially when you've been working with them one on one. I dreading the day I won't see the kids I tutor from RefugeeOne. Serving also gives you a chance to make a difference, granted its not a huge change in the global view but it is in the eyes of the child, community, person, ect you are helping. That's a big enough reason for me to serve. 

Blog #1

What I like most about the STARS LEAD program is that it give you an opportunity to grow as a grow as a student, leader, and member of the community. I love how the STARS LEAD program becomes involved in the Rogers Park community. By the end of the program I hope accomplish feeling more comfortable in taking on leadership skills and giving back to the Loyola community.

Leadership has always been a hard word to define (well at least for me).  Leadership is when a person is able to move a group forward towards a goal. A leader should be someone who knows how to guide a group towards the right direction, but should not be intimidating or rude. Leadership involves getting to know your group and allowing them to flourish and overcome obstacles. 

In our first STARS meeting I was slightly nervous before meeting all the other STARS LEAD members. After introductions, I felt more comfortable because I realized many of us were aiming towards similar goals. It seems that many of us had goals in which we hope to improve our leadership skills in the future. 

Skills I hope to gain from the STARS LEAD are:

• have better communication skills
• learn how to work and interact with people from different backgrounds
• improve independent decision making

SLI:

Before the SLI Conference I was slightly upset, because it was the same date as the ski trip. But after the introduction, I thought "Okay, this might not be that bad".

The first workshop I went to was called "Set the World on Fire". I went to this one because it reminded me of the Alicia Keys song and also many of STARS members wanted to go to this one. At this workshop we were set to think about the good we could do with our major. This workshop gave me the opportunity to reflect on what I wanted to do with my future in regards to my major. As well as thinking about what I wanted to get out at my stay at Loyola. As I made my chart, I realized the next four year would pass by quickly and we do not have time to waste; we need to take advantage of the opportunities offered while we can. 

The second workshop I went to was "Marketing Your Leadership Skills".  This workshop concentrated on skills, resumes and social networks. I learn how important skills are and learned that there many skills out there. I learned the importance of a perfect resume and about the resources to edit them. 

I was disappointed about the last workshop. I expect our workshop leader to explain more but I felt as if he were only challenging our ideas without giving logic to the disagreements. I believe if he were to explain more on his topic we would have all have gotten more out of workshop. 

In conclusion, I was glad I was able to attend the conference. Meeting other students involved in a various amounts of activities throughout campus inspires me to be more involved.