Nano-Passion said:
As of this moment I am in a community college but I'm doing very good and love learning. I am planning to transfer to a reputable university to obtain my bachelors and later to an ivy league school such as Harvard university perhaps.
But it is no easy feat to get into Harvard, they don't just care about your scores. My professor who does college counseling tells me that they look for people that stand out through leadership and activities that they have done.
I was thinking of writing a book since I love to write about math and science but I don't exactly have the time as of this moment and I've heard that publishing is a real pain in the ***.
I need to contribute to society and show that I have great capabilities that the university can use. Any thoughts on what direction I can take to show that I deserve a spot?
I have never been or am affiliated with any ivy league school. This is just my opinion and its probably a good idea to take it with a grain of salt.
When I think of leadership I think of basically being pro-active in the sense of showing some initiative and creating a scenario where you use that initiative and collaboration with others to achieve something for the group.
I don't think of leadership as having to necessary be a "full time leader" at the top of some social pyramid: in fact i think its a bad example that can portray bad leaders as "leaders" when they do not have the intent of creating benefits for all, but instead possibly only themselves.
With this in mind there are lot of opportunities to "lead". You could get involved with some voluntary group and take a pro-active role like creating or extending an existing program. So like if you did voluntary work and you met some disadvantaged people, and after some experience you felt that you had an idea where you could implement something new and collaborated with the charity/voluntary agency that was creating some kind of new benefit, then in my mind that's an example of leadership.
If you are a senior in college and you get involved in mentoring programs where you help younger people out by giving them advice possibly academic, but also "life" advice where you can help them, or at least encourage them, to make decisions that might help them make choices that are in their best interest when they are either uninformed or in a slump.
One kind of story comes to mind when I think about a good leader and that's Chuck Norris [please spare me the chuck norris jokes ;)] Chuck Norris as you may know is a martial artist champion and had a good success in this area.
But people may not know that Chuck Norris actually works with disadvantaged youth and teaches them discipline, self-respect, and confidence to help these people get out of the path of gang-life and what is associated with that. He helps these youth have a positive outlook and to improve their perspective and quality of life in a dramatic way.
That's what I think of when I think of a leader. Most of the leaders of this world are people that no-one knows about, and there's plenty of them around. They don't have to be Mother Theresa to be called a leader: its often things that are more subtle which people don't really notice.
So if I had some advice, my advice to you is to find some way to use your experience in a way that you can use that experience to help other less experienced than yourself.
