The following is a short ‘about me’ essay assignment for my Leadership 101 course, from my first semester at Agnes Scott. In The Role of Writers as Moral Leadership, we identified our leadership skills and ways to develop our moral role in society as writers and leaders. This essay encapsulates my outlook when I began college: I was not sure what I wanted to be but I knew I could draw on my multicultural background, creativity and curiousity. Over time, I changed my major to International Relations, but always kept the drive to try new things.
My name is Bethany Velarde, and I am pursuing history, political science and foreign languages, specifically Spanish and German, at Agnes Scott College. In addition to the social sciences, my co-curricular interests are theater and visual arts; I love engaging with my peers to communicate academic knowledge through creative expression. The creative process is essential to who I am because it was my adjustment method as I moved around while growing up. I drew and wrote to process moves, and it helped me share my personality and ideas to new friends. Applying my understanding of interdisciplinary concepts and my life experience to original artwork inspires, motivates and fulfills me.
In July 2018, I moved to Georgia after three years in the Netherlands. I was born in Norwich, Connecticut, and still consider it my hometown despite moving to Florida, Mexico, Texas, Maryland, Germany, Virginia, the Netherlands and Agnes Scott. Living both abroad and stateside during the formative periods of middle and high school has expanded my identity to be as complex as my moving history. Now, having returned to America as an adult, and entering college life, I feel equipped with the learning environment and emotional maturity to examine where my identities intersect and how I can harness my strengths and background for further leadership growth.
The purpose of my selected Leadership 101 class was to “examine various examples of literature and oratory that have inspired and facilitated change in America and globally.” It included a cursory overview of leadership theory as we explored and interrogated how writers have influenced conditions in our public lives, in our schools and universities, in our cultural, civic, and religious lives, in our homes, and at critical moments in our personal lives.
The following is from the course description: “Each of us plays a role in the moral drama of the world around us. Anyone can inspire and help shape us morally, spur us on to purposeful action—and from time to time we are called on to be those leaders for others, either in a small, day-to-day way, or on the world’s larger stage. At this time in America, and in the rest of the world, we seem to need moral leadership especially, but the need for moral inspiration is ever present.”
