SAIL

With all of this talk about our next president potentially being the first female president, has anyone stopped and thought about our First Man? The role our First Man would execute has to be taken into as much consideration as the role of our first female president.

From the first through the forty-fourth First Lady, Michelle Obama, first ladies are the trophy wives and add a certain dynamic or tool to enforce the president’s policy message. Often times as seen in most campaign races, first ladies will evoke the family feelings and values their husband, the presidential candidate, wants metaphorically pushed with their political agenda to show what the president believes in and ignite pathos in a rhetorical approach. Most first ladies come into the White House with a specific platform or cause they are passionate about pushing during their husband’s presidential term; for instance, First Lady Obama’s platform during both terms has been ‘Let’s Move!’

This makes me think, will the role of the significant other change? Will a First Man have the same responsibilities as the First Lady? This is a complete gender specific position, and it would seem a bit feministic if a man were to pursue the role as a First Lady would. It all comes back to the way our culture identifies the roles of each gender, so my opinion of the role being feministic might be different than the person’s sitting beside me. A man could always tackle a platform more masculine-oriented.

As society progresses, and the patriarchy system is progressed into a matriarchy system, it is no doubt the job description of a future First Man will need to be throughly examined and question.

Have you ever thought that you were not very creative? Or you have thought you were creative but your creative ideas were impractical? In my psych 100 class we were learning about Erik Erikson’s psychosocial development. Erikson’s theory on development is that human beings tend to struggle between two critical concepts at every stage in life. For example, at 0-1.5 years, a child may either trust their caregiver (due to positive contact between the caregiver and the child) or express mistrust (due to neglect or negative experiences in this timeframe). In order to be able to become a stable and healthy individual, according to Erikson, one must pass each stage of development picking up the positive traits like trust, autonomy, identity…The reason I bring psychology into my blog this week, is to address the issue of how we view creativity and how creative we expect leaders to be. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently got in an argument with my grandmother. My mom mentioned that she was going to be volunteering, and I jokingly asked what she was getting out of it. My grandmother, appalled, began yelling at me about how we are supposed to volunteer for no other reason than to help others, and we shouldn’t get anything from it! While my comment was joking, my sentiments were quite real. I believe that we should definitely gain something from our volunteer experiences! Whether it’s a fuzzy warm feeling or valuable skills, service shouldn’t be one-sided. Volunteering is a great way of seeing different perspectives, learning, gaining valuable skills, and yes, that great feeling like we’ve made a positive change!

Read the rest of this entry »

Social Movements

A social movement often focuses on addressing a problem a certain community faces. Historic movements in the past have created a country that is more accepting and tolerant of the various people that were members of the country, and to us some of the change may seem ridiculous because we were born into a world where these social movements achieved a majority of what they set out to do. Women were given the right to vote, that may seem a bit silly to us—but back then, the patriarchy dominated the country and it was an extreme change for the country.

Unfortunately, the first and second waves of feminism lacked in creating an environment in which all women could be empowered—demonstrating how even though some movements have good intentions, they can be inadequate or even harmful.

One thing that the first and second wave movements did was exclude various women from the movement. If they weren’t white, cisgender, middle/upper class women they didn’t really have a place.

Looking at current movements though, there has been a shift towards attempting to be more inclusive, ergo more empowering for more people. At the marriage equality rally which I was super fortunate to be a part of, people of color took a stand and discussed their personal struggles being queer people of color. Even more recently, I have been able to be a part of the immigration reform rally, and there were people of all faiths, countries, genders, and even sexualities present. When a movement focuses on creating equality for all, especially among those in the community that carry more than one oppressed identity, it becomes a more powerful and more valid movement.

I feel confident that with the leaders of our floor today, and with our current generation, the future will be one that is more inclusive, accepting, and empowering for all people. We are all capable of creating huge waves of social change, but we should also all be conscious not to exclude people and perpetuate what we are fighting against.

Leaders vs. Leadership

We all have hopefully, at some point in the year, begun to understand that being a leader is not just a one dimensional role.

Leaders have a duty: to create and foster effective leadership in the respective community they serve or are working for.

One way of looking at what effective leadership looks like is through examples we can relate to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEJaz3sinEs

That is one way of helping create an effective environment of leadership. What a formal leader can do at the beginning is start the forming and understanding of the group. During the storming stage, problems are addressed and put out into the open. Storming is often a hard stage of group development to get through, often because problems can always arise and group members don’t attempt to look for solutions. But when those problems are addressed and the group is able to find consensus on solutions, the forming stage starts and members of the group/community feel more in tune with leadership instead of the one or two leaders present. Thus, the role of the leader is given to all the members of the community who have thus been empowered. This leads to the final stage, in which everyone plays a role in community building and empowerment. The one distinct change between the forming stage and performing stage is the definition of leader changes from one person who is in “charge” to everyone being empowered and contributing. Thus leadership becomes an environment in which everyone is a leader and plays a significant supportive role in the group and there is a clear cohesion.

That is effective leadership and that helps create an ongoing change that could be very beneficial not only for the group dynamic but also for the community the group serves.