Hi everybody! My name is Valerie Tindall and I am a senior here at UCF, my major is Women’s Studies with a minor in Communications, and I am also thinking about adding another minor, maybe in political science. I am originally from Cooper City Florida, which is a small suburb outside of Fort Lauderdale, but I’ve been living in Orlando for about eight years now. Growing up I was raised in a very feminist, liberal household so going into Women’s Studies just seemed like a very natural thing for me to do and I was very interested in the history of Women’s Studies and how everything began.
From a very young age I think I was always interested in leadership and how to be a better leader and I think it’s because I was always so shy, so I wanted to try and figure out a way to use my voice and get it heard. As far as being a leader right now, I am a shift supervisor at Starbucks so I am responsible for directing the baristas that I work with on what to do and how to do it and if I didn’t have strong leadership skills, it would make the job very difficult, luckily I am very good at my job. I am still trying to find other outlets for my leadership skills, such as volunteering for an organization or some type of activism but between working full time and going to school full time and trying to have some semblance of a social life, it’s kind of difficult to find the extra time.
Defining leadership, I feel is a difficult thing to do because everyone has a different definition for it, but to me it’s about taking on the responsibility of guiding or directing people with a shared common goal. I think leadership can be different for different genders, I know for me as a woman when I am leading a group at work I take into account everyone’s strengths but I also take into account how someone is feeling that day or what position they would like to be in. Where I feel like some men that I have worked with tend to just put people where they want them and don’t take the individual into account.
This will be my second leadership class I am taking, I have also taken Girls and Leadership and I am still hoping to overcome this shyness I have about speaking up in class and sharing my ideas. I am hoping that this class will help me to use my leadership skills all the time, even in situations I am not comfortable in.
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