Lessons Learned From The Summit

By Sridutt "Sri" Nimmagadda

Well, it's been a little over a week since we all returned from the Leadership conference in Washington D.C. and it seems that we've all more or less adjusted back to the humdrum of our daily work. Reflecting on one's experience at a life-changing event is a task that is not to be taken lightly. So I decided to wait a week, catch up on sleep, finish Breaking Bad on Netflix, watch paint dry, and then start on reflecting on the Student Leadership lessons. Given that you all probably have non-profits to start or diseases to find cures for or Ivy League schools to get into, I wanted to keep my reflections as short and meaningful as possible.

So here it is. My Lessons Learned From the Summit:

*drumroll*

1. All the talk and holding hands and rhetoric about bearing positive change in the world is great, but nothing feels quite as good as actually doing and making a positive change in the world. That's why the Service Day at the Capitol Area Food Back was by far my favorite experience of the entire internship. While the execution of our service seemed mechanical due to our efficiency, our motivation was anything but. For three hours, packing the bags and effectively serving our community were the only things we cared about. Our common goal and shared vision made us work efficiently as a system.
2. There are people way smarter and more driven than you even within the microcosm of the Student Leaders program. There are people who think that you are way smarter and more driven than them. There are people who have both of those sentiments. But the central issue is not whether someone is smarter or more successful than anyone else. We, as Student Leaders, have a vision for a better world that we want to create in the future and we manifested it in different ways through our volunteer experience and non-profit work. The warrant behind a world being peaceful or economically stable is that all factors and elements within our system are working together cohesively. If we apply that same principle towards our service, then we realize why buzzwords like "diversity" and "teamwork" are actually really important in a non-profit or even business setting. We have to work together, not apart.
3. Nobody really knows what the Technology Student Association (TSA) is. This is a problem. It's okay; I will proselytize you all to join [or start a chapter of] TSA over time!
4. Community service or working to serve the greater good should never, ever be a political issue. I'm conservative, you're liberal. I may be a Republican, you may be a Democrat. We may have deep, fundamentally different opinions on social, economic, and political issues. But what brings us together? Our focus on the lowest common denominator: humanity. 
5. The richest man in the world is not the man with the most, but the man who needs the least. At the very least, we are all so emotionally rich that we invest so much more into our communities selflessly than most others do. It is why you're a Student Leader. The leaders of today trust us to be the leaders of tomorrow.

Now don't those lessons just make you want to smile? Give yourself a pat on the back? Feel warm and fuzzy inside?

Good. But don't feel complacent for too long. We've got a world to change. Let's go do it Student Leaders.