FLP as a Mentor | amandamazzone

Now that you have been through the Freshman Leadership Program, how have you used the skills you learned last year in order to help you become a stronger and more effective leader this year? What is one leadership style that you think you used most in your time as a mentor for the program or one that you think you have learned the most from over the year?

Finishing through two whole years in the Freshman Leadership Program, I have become a stronger and even more confident me. FLP has given me the self-confidence in knowing who I am as a person and helping me realize the potential, not only in myself, but everyone around me. Being a leader is to be weary of your capability but even more importantly hopeful, trusting, and reassuring of and to the people that you meet in life. FLP opened many doors of opportunity for me on campus. Many leadership positions on our campus are held by former FLP alum, and the funny thing is, is that it’s not just because their resume said they were in FLP. It is because they are natural born leaders, in every sense of the word. FLP doesn’t make you a leader; it only brings it out in you and makes it shine brighter than you ever knew it could. The program doesn’t define you, you define it, and every year this program continues to exist, it never fails to change students for the better. I learned in FLP that every second and experience is a learning opportunity. Learn always, often, and with a reckless abandon. If that is a leadership style, to live and learn, then that is what I used most as a mentor in the program. To attract people by the way I live and lead there on. Being a mentor in the program as well taught me that people work in extraordinarily different ways. To learn to be a dynamic person, able to not necessarily change, but adapt to situations is an amazing talent. When you’re a leader you really have to live with the mission that you cannot always change situations, but you can change you react. And that’s all it really takes to be a leader.

How are you going to keep applying what you have learned from the program this far to your future leadership goals? How has your leadership plan that you made in your freshman year portfolio changed? Stayed the same? What are your new goals for applying your leadership skills that you have developed?

I’m going to continue growing both mentally and physically. Ok, maybe not so much physically, but mentally for sure. Everyday I aim to see the world a different way. To look at the people I encounter and attract them with the way I live. To enrich, inspire, challenge, dare, protect, and make sure that people can feel their potential and their worth. I’m going to continue doing this by doing me. Because that is what I want for everyone, to know that I care, to know that as a leader I will be there for him or her in the ways some people cannot. Looking back at my old portfolio, it makes me smile how much I have changed and how much I haven’t. My leadership plan was the same thing that I explained earlier in my previous answer. It’s really funny that I still have the same answer, funny and impressive. Makes me proud that I still have the same thoughts, but a nuanced version that is ever changing yet ever lasting. With that, my leadership will always be evolving. It’s an innate ability in myself, and in everyone else that I cannot suppress. It will always grow for the better and will continue to shock myself and everyone around me.

Have you effectively lived out the mission statement you created your freshman year? Or would you change it? How would you change it? How did you apply your mission statement to the mentor position? What was your favorite part of being a mentor for the program? How did you grow from taking on this hands-on leadership opportunity?

My mission statement of from last year was “Do no harm”. Then it changed from that to “The least thing I want to do is ruin someone’s day, and even though I wish my mission statement was simply to make people smile, I have to understand that I am capable of hurting others too.” Along with that statement, I also included that every opportunity was an opportunity to grow. To learn always, often, and with a reckless abandon. Would I change this? No. Will I keep adding on to this statement? Yes. Always. Do I have anything to add on to my mission statement? Yeah, coming to think about it more, yeah I do. It’s a quote from my sorority’s patron saint, Saint Catherine of Sienna. “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.” Be who God meant you to be. Be that person and you will ignite a flame in yourself and to all those in your life that will never die out. My favorite part about being a mentor this in year in the Freshman Leadership Program was the feeling I got on Tuesdays. I woke up and knew we had seminar and that I could see the faces of my mentees, every day growing older and more responsible. How could I have been a role model to them being me? How could they have turned out so well when I was there mentor? I must have done something right (Sound the of Music pun right thur).

The Freshman Leadership Program as a Mentor

IHeloo Mentees! Tis I, Amanda Mazzone! You probz cannot see what this because it is in white and my background is very bright ahahahahahaha sorry yall but whateveaafjdiahfpea LOL Love you guys doe