Class

Class / Leadership / PLA / PLA2013 — 1 Comment
29
Aug 14

Confusion and Conflict

It is important to take time to know about the world. It is unfortunately very easy to get trapped in the “Penn State bubble” or my own “personal bubble”.

How can we remind ourselves to step outside ourselves? How can we remind ourselves to educate ourselves outside our primary interests? For me, one motivation is knowing that if I want to make an impact on the world I must know about the world. Another attempt at motivation is that I try to surround myself by people who are also interested in knowing in the world so that there is a social pressure to be up to date on events. And finally, I try to take opporturtunities like these blog posts and make them a time for me to read and critically question world events.

This week I am taking the time to better educate myself and understand the current events in Syria and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. I am very confused on the details of the conflict and hope taking this time will help me to better understand the complexity of the war.  Much of this post will be facts about the current state of the world, but this post is an exercise of leadership for me; I am stepping outside with primary interests and challenging myself to be an educated citizen. If you are specialized in the subject or just disagree with anything I write below, please talk to me about it.

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What is the ISIS?

ISIS stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. It is the Sunni Jihadist group in the Middle East, and in 2013, it “emerged from remnants of Al Queda and began to operate in Syria” (New York Times).

The Syrian Civil War seems to have provided ISIS with an opportunity to gain power.

” In 2013, Hezbollah entered the war in support of the Syrian army.[67][68] In the east, theIslamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), a jihadist militant group which was initially linked to Al-Qaeda in Iraq, made rapid military gains in both Syria and Iraq, eventuallyconflicting with the other rebels. In July 2014, ISIS controlled a third of Syria’s territory and most of its oil and gas production, thus establishing itself as the major opposition force.[69]“--Syrian Civil War Wikipedia

 

Syrian Civil War

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The Syrian government has military support from Russia and Iran while the rebels have recieved weapons from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United States.

 

Where is the line between the Rebel group and ISIS?

I am not entirely sure. I am trying to dissect this out. From my understanding the ISIS is a sub-set of the rebels, and in a way the ISIS group has taken advantage of the conflict to spread the power.

According to the New York Times, in recent months ISIS has gained large expanses of territory and “ISIS has become more attractive to would-be militants because, unlike Al Qaeda, it has seized territory that it rules by strict Islamic law.”

What is ISIS doing? Why are they dangerous?

The Obama Administration says the ISIS militant group “poses the greates threat to the United States since Al Qaeda before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.” (New York Times)

The ISIS is incredibly brutal and is gaining attraction through its reputation. They have tortured and mutilated citizens under the islamic creed.

“The United Nations reported that in the 17 days from 5 to 22 June, ISIS killed more than 1,000 Iraqi civilians and injured more than 1,000.”-ISIS Wikipedia

“On 29 May, a village in Syria was raided by ISIS and at least 15 civilians were killed, including, according to Human Rights Watch, at least six children.[332] A hospital in the area confirmed that it had received 15 bodies on the same day.[333] The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that on 1 June, a 102-year-old man was killed along with his whole family in a village in Hama.”- ISIS Wikipedia

Current State?

As of August 22, the United States is considering military air strikes on the ISIS in Syria. President Obama is attempting to create a long-term plan to fight of the Islamic State in Syria, but there is reasonable hesitance to put US military forces directly into the Syrian war (Wall Street Journal)

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I definitely know more about the Syrian conflict than I did this morning. Here’s to continuing to better understanding the world around us and striving  for peace.

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21
Mar 14

Education Shapes Humanity

Damon Sims, esq. the Vice President for Student Affairs came and spoke with us in Class Thursday. While he hit on a lot of interesting topics ranging from cultural diversity to Indian University, his comments on how to motivate unengaged students to get involved resonated with me the most.

It is something that trouble me a lot. Within me I feel an innate ambitious drive. If I am not pushing myself forward, I feel behind. I am motivated by a feat of being average. Therefore to be honest, it is hard for me to fully understand how to tap into the mindset of unengaged students.

It was refreshing to hear that Sims is constantly thinking about how to get this sector of students involved. He has a vision for the education every student deserves. We are at an incredible institution where we can learn in and out of the classroom. Sims explained, “The best education better include everything”. In order for students to get a full breadth of knowledge they must participate in activities that challenge them and enhance their growth. He went further to explain that “learning should be seamless”. I agree whole-heartedly with this; ideally I would be learning throughout the day, not just in the classroom. In order for this to happen though, we must build a community that values and encourages intellect.

It seems so often that people make generalizations for the “unmotivated student population” and in those generalizations sometimes people view them as helpless. If we could shift that framework, as Sims is working to do, we could shift a culture. Education shapes humanity to me. And if every student was motivated to participate in and felt rewarded and recognized by intellectual challenges, we would have a better world.

For our project I feel like understanding how to motivate and inspire students to care is critical. I have heard stories of professors giving up on students and students not caring about a class because they were doing poorly. This is they damaging cycle that needs to end. However in order to end it, we must understand what creates it, and I hypothesize that  disadvantages from the start and harsh circumstances may be a root cause for a student’s lack of motivation. If we want to give disadvantaged  students a chance, we need to empower them while giving them resources.

If we can  them the resources but if they are not motivated and refuse to take advantage of their opportunities, how will progress take place?

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20
Nov 13

“Leadership” and Understanding

Keith Forest spoke in our class Tuesday night and I have to say he was by far my favorite presenter so far this semester. Right from the start his enthusiasm and strong tone of voice captivated by attention. It reminded me how critical confidence is to leadership and how I want to continue practicing my presentation skills.

He provided us with such a strong example of how a leader relates to his audience. From the start he was vibrant and open. He interestingly acknowledged his age and perhaps more importantly he pointed out his age difference from us. To some audiences this generation gap could be an inhibitor for connection, however Keith Forest flipped this on its head and used it to his advantage. He made jokes about us “young people” and he overall set the tone that he could relate to us and understands while simultaneously acknowledging that he is older and has wisdom to share. This caught my interest and I paid attention the entire class.

Furthermore on top of Forest’s charisma, he had a lot of knowledge. I will admit I have never taken an economy course and cannot say I take the time to learn about it on my own. When I first saw the rather thick packet of  papers filled with statistics,I was a little intimidated. However Mr. Forest had an organized and engaging way of teaching basic economics to people have never seen it before. This is a skill not to be overlooked. I think it is one thing to be specialized in your field but it takes that much more effort to understand it to the point to make it simple for the general public.

My big picture take away from his class was RISK. I think we all think about risk a lot but may not meticulously calculate it. Bringing it to light and providing a variety of definitions was effective and got me questioning. Reflecting, I think a huge leadership tool is being able to calculate risk and make the correct decisions accordingly. Sometimes as a leader, you need to take a risk, and other times you must take a more cautious approach. Knowing how to make the distinction between these circumstances is critical for leadership.

Relating to this, the specifics of Keith’s presentation focused on health care. I think as we acknowledge in our class discussion a few weeks ago, health care is a complicated “grey” topic. For this reason, I thought it was imperative that Keith broke down the Affordable Care Act into easily understood objectives. He explained that there were 5 key objectives for ACA:

  1. Provide millions more Americans with Insurance
  2. Expand Benefits
  3. Bring Insurance Premiums down
  4. Bend the cost curve down
  5. No addition to budget district

After providing us with these insights, Forest explained which objectives were currently being met and which were not. 1 and 2 were an easy check yes, while 4 and 5 were facing complications. He went on further to explain that many people tend focus on the idea of health care and overlook the actual financial aspect and risk. As he explained this, I have to admit that I am one of those people. The concept of healthcare for everyone is hard to argue with. If I have the opportunity for healthcare when I am sick, why shouldn’t my neighbor as well? Health in my opinion should not come down to luck of your privilege. However I am realizing I cannot ignore the financial aspect of healthcare because in order for it to succeed and help the maximum number of people, it needs to be funded.

Forest explained that the initial plan for funding came from the idea that people young and old would buy health care. Health care spending happens primarily for the old and in the moments before death, therefore young people would basically be funding the older population’s health care. The symbiotic relationship between young and old is critical for the success of the system. However the problem we are now facing is that not enough young people are signing up. This opened my eyes because I am a so called “young person” and I did not think I was necessarily playing an impactive role within the health care issue. I think if you asked around my peers may also have felt that same way. I began to question that if I really wanted to support the ACA then maybe my first step would be to get health care from the system myself. I also began to further question how we can incentify that system because as Forest pointed out, currently there are major flaws and loop holes that are hindering its success.

Overall and hopefully you all can tell from reading this post, Forest’s presentation made me question and think a lot.

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22
Oct 13

Can We Define Leadership? Does It Matter?

Dr. Casimer DeCusatis brought up a really interesting point in his class presentation today. He explained leadership is difficult to define and each person defines it differently for themselves. If that is so, then how do we teach leadership?

Being the engineer that he is Dr. Decusatis used gravity as an analogy. He admitted physicists still today have a hard time defining gravity. We are still confused on how it is created, yet we know it exists and more importantly we know how to incorporate it and apply it. The big idea behind this is the fact that we can get around the lack of a strict definition. In the same way, just because we don’t have a strict definition of leadership does not mean we can’t learn about it and apply it.

In order to teach leadership, we may not have to focus on defining it first but instead “mimick” it. Or in other words, it may be more effective to learn from other leader’s actions and try to emulate them, rather than get bogged done in the philosophy of leadership. Descusitis presented us with the quote, “If you emulate something long enough, it becomes the way you act”. Decusatis emphasized this point by encouraging all of us to find mentors or role models in our lives. And by watching that role model who see as a leader, we can begin to emulate them and learn skills. I will add that in order to find our own leadership style, we can learn by emulating but will need to constantly reflect on the methods that work best for us. Overall his discussion was uplifting because I sometimes get frustrated over the fact that we may not need to have a concrete definition of leadership in order to be leaders.

Another point Decusatis emphasized that I agreed with is how necessary it is for a leader to believe. I think believing is harder than we think sometimes. When you have an idea, at one point do you believe in it enough to make it a reality? It seems at least for me that a lot of my ideas remain in my head and that is something I will need to improve on if I want to be a leader. Furthermore, believing also involves believing in a better world. IBM’s slogan to me epitomized leadership, “Let’s build a smarter planet”. I know I have encountered people that have asked me “Why do I care?” or said things like “Some problems can’t be fixed”. BUT I believe they can be fixed, and if a problem isn’t present today, it doesn’t mean we can not find one tomorrow. Before this class, I would have just categorized this “believing” as my optimistic personality, but Decusatis provided me with an example of how this can be an asset in leadership. Just because the people around you say there is’t a solution, doesn’t mean there isn’t one.

Decusatis closed with this and so will I,  “Leadership is about the human spirit”. It is about enlivening your soul, wanting to be a part of something bigger than yourself, and striving to make a difference in the world.

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04
Oct 13

Class reflection

I had somewhat of an epiphany in class on the dangers of limited information. Before meeting Zack Moore, I had a limited idea of the job of a lobbyist.

My knowledge and perspective of a lobbyist came largely from one case in 2009 which Merck lobbied Rick Perry into mandating the Gardasil vaccine. Gardasil is the HPV vaccine, a vaccine that prevents a sexually transmitted disease and could also then  protect someone from contacting cervical cancer. By mandating this vaccine, young children were getting vaccines to prevent them from an STD.  Merck made millions of off this vaccine and Merck also was known to be a big contributor to the Perry campaign. There is a lot of controversy and discussion on what actually happened but the big picture presented the idea that there was corruption.

Whenever someone brought up the idea of a lobbyist I immediately thought of this case which I admit is not fair.

Also Mr. Moore explained ” I am only as good as my information”. This made me further reflect that I better be searching, and scavenging for the most credible information out there.

I needed to consider in the Merck/Rick Perry case, that this was an instance of corruption and that was a big reason why it was being reported on. Also in this case Merck  seemed to have influence over Rick Perry due to its power in his campaign finance. I learned in class that this power dynamic is not representative of typical lobbyist relationships.  Moore actually described his lobbyists experiences as usually being the one with limited power. He described his job about not changing people’s minds but finding places where interests align. This perspective was something I isolated myself from learning previously. I am personally now very happy that we have a lobbyist to represent Penn State and I am even happier that I know about it.

Overall in class this week, I learned something unexpected. My perspective of lobbyists completely did a 180 from corrupt to necessary. And this shift was a pleasant reminder that I need to only make strong opinions after doing thorough research. Moving forward when I have a strong opinion, I want to challenge myself and take the initiative to read the counter-argument. As we have discussed before, this is an important park of critically thinking.

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29
Aug 13

My promise

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma- which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”

– Steve Jobs

At orientation, Dean Brady discussed why do we blog? I may be paraphrasing his response, but I believe we blog so that we can grapple with complex constructs, begin to feel comfortable with our opinions and ideas, and have the confidence to articulate these ideas and defend them.

Now I consider myself to be an opinionated person, so when I first heard this I thought “Of course”. However, now that I’ve been reflecting a lot on our first class, I recognize putting your thoughts into actions may be harder for me than I originally expected.  Although I thoroughly enjoyed class and learned a lot from my classmates, I barely said anything.

Do my opinions matter if they never get heard? I won’t influence anyone if I remain silence. Yes I recognize these points are fairly obvious, but I think they are important reminders for myself and others. Especially in a crowd of well-educated, strong-willed personas, I need to give myself that extra push to speak up.

There was once a point in time when I didn’t consciously question my thoughts before I spoke; if I had an idea, it just came out. I think most people call this having “no filter”. This changed as I grew up and matured. Mainly throughout high school, and especially through out our rhetoric and civic life course freshman year, I became increasingly aware of the complex dynamic and difference between what I want to say, and how others may perceive it. I have come to believe there is this strange grey area between your brain and your mouth that sometimes does not fully capture your vivid thoughts. Now knowing that this grey area exists, I am almost constantly analyzing things like word choice, tone of voice, and posture because I know the power it has over other people’s perception of me.

I do fear now that my new awareness is transforming into a self-consciousness inhibiting me  from even trying to translate my thoughts into words. I guess I could have worse problems; I could have no thoughts at all, but I seriously need to muster up some courage!

Recognizing this makes me excited for PLA next week, and the rest of my three years. I have three years to practice and work, and hopefully improve.

I have the next few days to read, read, read about national security and form a confident credible argument. And next Tuesday evening, I promise to voice my opinions. I want to spark conversation. I want to be a catalyst for thoughts.

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