My first PLA experience was this time last year: a picnic at President Erickson’s house. I remember feeling more than excited to be a part of a group with so many aspiring, engaged individuals whose acquaintances I had yet to make. We arrived at the Erickson house, greeted by Mrs. Erickson who was halfway between saying hello and halfway between getting the cheesy potatoes out of the oven.
We mingled, talked, bragged, compared, gave the old “up-down,” as is typical of new college students meeting each other for the first time. I snagged my share of roasted peppers and cheesy potatoes (I will never forgot how delicious they were) and walked out to the lawn with a few of my new classmates. I would later learn that their names were Alex Riviere, Asia Grant and William Ferguson. Each of them was vastly different from myself, but we shared the commonality of our freshy status and decided to play bocce on the lawn.
I remember very vividly how I felt at that moment. I remember thinking, “How many freshman, within a year, get invited to the President’s house and get to play bocce on his lawn? I am so lucky!” If I only knew.
As the year ended, I almost forgot about PLA. I moved onto my summer job, an internship with the Penn State Lunar Lion team, and went about my life. That summer, I applied to attend a NASA social in California for a launch of a satellite designed to study Earth’s carbon emissions and was ultimately accepted. When I presented the opportunity to the mission director for the Lunar Lion team, Michael Paul, he was very excited but told me frankly that there wasn’t much money in our budget for travel.
He realized, however, the immense opportunities this event held for both me and the Lunar Lion team, so he suggested I go to the Presidential Leadership Academy and see if they had any money in their budget to help me out. I remembered thinking, “There’s no way they’re gonna give some newbie freshman any money to go anywhere to do anything. They hardly know who I am!”
But I was wrong. After a few meetings, the PLA sponsored my trip to California. This of course, is a function of the generosity of Ed and Helen Hintz, who sponsor the academy and make all these unbelievably enriching opportunities possible. I flew out to California, covered the launch of a government rocket as a media representative, attended engineering briefs and in the end, had the immense honor of interviewing the Director of NASA Major General Charles Bolden.
Now, Penn State has a new President, President Barron. As the first class to experience Dr. Barron’s presidency, we were also the first to be taught by the President himself this spring. I have learned a lot from Dr. Barron over the course of this semester with regard to leadership, integrity, dignity and respect, but if I had one takeaway from this semester’s class, it would be this: learn to laugh. Dr. Barron’s innate ability to take every negative situation with a grain of salt and turn bad situations into better ones through effective critical thought and good humor is a skill that a truly respect with every fiber of my being.
It’s hard to believe it’s only been a year. Thanks to the PLA, thanks to Ed and Helen Hintz, thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Erickson, thanks to Dr. and Mrs. Barron, thanks to Melissa, Dean Brady, Lisa, Whitney and everyone else involved, I have traveled to California, Boston and Puerto Rico, I have eaten breakfast with a man on whom the musical Rent was based, the woman in charge of all of the merchandising for Disney and Peter Ter, a man who escaped the terrors of a civil war in Sudan to come to America and get an education. I have learned ridiculously much from our speakers, our experiences, our travels and our students, that it couldn’t have been only a year. But it has been.
From bocce to Barron, I’m proud to be a member of The Presidential Leadership Academy’s Zeta class. And it’s only my first year.
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