Accepting the Challenge: ECU LeaderShape 2015

By: Angel Chukwu, Honors College Sophomore

Dear Enlightened Reader,

When I signed up to attend ECU’s LeaderShape Institute, I really didn’t know what to expect. Of course, that sounds cliché, but they actually didn’t give us much information on what we were going to be doing that week. All insight was extracted from short talks given by past attendees, a location, and a packing list – everything else was both secretive and well-planned. I’ve attended leadership camps with a similar purpose, but those programs were nowhere near my six days in Blowing Rock, NC.

If you were to read the week schedule that we were given once we arrived, you might have thought that this was a jam-packed, lecture-based program. But the moment we stepped into the community room, we were greeted with a lively, amiable vibe that would last throughout the week.

During Leadershape, we quickly identified who we were, who we wanted to be, and how we functioned as student leaders. Throughout the week, we engaged in thought-provoking dialogue that helped us develop our individual characters and our visions. There were even some really uncomfortable patches that we landed on. We talked about big social elephants in the room and emotions were real, raw, and unedited – but after these activities, there was an even more authentic dialogue that ensued. We dove into the vast nature of the human experience where we discovered that despite separations in personal preference and upbringing, we all fit together like a puzzle (with a whole lot of pieces).

There are many important takeaways from my LeaderShape journey, but the most prominent was a healthy disregard for the impossible. In an almost-but-not-so-cheesy-way, LeaderShape helped to restore my faith in humanity. I only hope that everyone is able to get involved with a program that has helped me to think, grow, and expand so much in just one summer.