I'm in LOVE

Yes, that's right, I Healy Rose Fitzpatrick am in L-O-V-E. I'm in love with a little thing called Leadershape and it's people. It was beyond the 6 most meaningful days of my life. I could talk about it for days, but I'll try and spare you my ramblings as best I can and just give you some of the highlights.

Day 1
AHHH we found out our family clusters! We spent a ton of time with our family throughout the week reflecting and discussing. I will talk more about my AMAZING family later (they deserve they're own post).


Day 2- The Value of One, The Power of All
Today we got to do a little community service. Me being the nature loving girl that I am, was excited  to go to Greenworks and we may or may not have taken a few wrong turns trying to get there. It's an awesome non-profit focused on beautifying and cleaning up the Asheville community. Since it was kinda g-ross that day, we worked inside opening hundreds of little cigarette butt holders, pairing gloves, and making sweet bundles of trash bags. We beasted these tasks in like .2 seconds and were ready for some more, so we went on down the street to clean off a sidewalk. This is when things got exciting. As we were shoveling and raking our little hearts out, we heard a scream. We look and a car hit a girl on a bicycle. The poor girl is down on the ground and the car backs up and then goes screeching off. Who does that?? Luckily we were there and were able to call for help and bless her heart, she ended up being fine. But if you're in Asheville and you see a female with a dark complexion and no heart driving a black sentra, you best call the police.

Highlight number 2-tacooooooooos for lunch and churroooooooos for desert

We also took the DISC personality test and oooo baby we referred to our types all week. D was dodminance, I was influence, S was steadiness, and C was conscientiousness. Guess which one I was....I'm an I. I's are basically super enthusiastic and optimistic and they're very persuasive. Congratulations DISC test, you nailed me.


Day 3- Challenging What is, Looking to What Could Be
Today was the day we started creating our visions. We wrote down all of the things we care about, our passions, etc and what we want to create in the world.We shared all of this in our families and then used it to create a vision. My vision was that I want Clemson students to raise enough money to build a school in Pakistan through Greg Mortenson's (author of Three Cups of Tea) Central Asia Institute . And I want his book to be required summer reading and I want him to come and speak to Clemson students. And, and, and, and more exciting stuff. Everyone had super awesome visions and it was great to see all of the positivity.

After dinner that night we had the opportunity to get to know some Clemson leaders (the people that always send you emails). Since Student Affairs is my jam, I tried to talk to all of the people there that dealt with it. I soaked it all in and lemme tell you,  it was delicious. I'm starting to think I'm probably never going to leave college.

Day 4- Bringing Vision to Reality
Big things happened today....there was an earthquake! Okay so maybe it wasn't a real earthquake and it was just an earthquake scenario but we sure did treat it as if it were a matter of life or death. We had to rank our steps of survival individually and then come to a consensus as a group. Even though it took us a while, and we had some disagreements, we finally decided on our survival steps. We scored ourselves and guess what? We did awesome! My score by myself was a whopping 34 but with all of our noggins together, we got a primo score of 6. Oh heyyyy awesome teamwork! The whole point of this exercise was to discuss different group behaviors. You've got your Task-Oriented Behaviors (TOB's), Maintenance-Oriented Behaviors (MOB's), and you can't forget those dreaded SOB's- Self Oriented Behaviors. It was neat to see how different people took on these roles without even knowing that they were.  One thing about Leadershape is that I learned a new set of vocabulary that I can't let go and sometimes I get funny looks when I use it in the real world.

OMG I almost forgot to tell you about StarPower. Okay so all day rumors had been flying around saying that tonight we were going to do something that would make us cry. Um so obviously I was not exactly looking forward to this. I mean who likes crying? Anywho after the suspense could build no more, we went inside and awaited our fate. It turns out we were just playing a game...cough...I mean a simulation. So you got different colored chips and tried to trade up. I had no idea what was going on so I just traded to talk to people and cashed in asap. I did surprisingly well and was in the top tier. Well I won't harp on any more details but this was all an exercise of power and class. So we had a nice discussion with everyone and then again in our families.

Day 5

We talked all about some integrity today. It was stressed how important it is to lead with integrity. What you believe on the inside needs to match your actions on the outside.We also shared our core values with each other which was nice.

There was also a little skit show that night. Each family came up with a skit about stuff we did that week and omg was it funny. I was laughing my pants off. There was a spoken word/interpretive dance combo, a real world spin off, and even an Allan from the Hangover look-a-like. 

After the show we went off in our families to have a final heart-to-heart. We got to share how we felt about each other. So what if my family talked from 8pm to 2am? Who cares if I had to eat my feelings in pepperoni pizza? We love each other that much and I will never let them go. 

So after all of that love, there was no point in me going to sleep. Besides, I wanted to spend as much time with these people as I possibly could before having to head back to reality. So Taylor, Nate, and me committed to staying up all night. Of course we had story time and played scrabble with our own rules. As I recall in a state of delirium we actually started playing with the bugs that flew in and tried to make them our pets. Don't judge, we were tired. Anywho we decided to go on a walk at sunrise and we went spelunkering down by the lake. We tried skipping rocks but we weren't to good at it so we just threw rocks in the lake and made a symphony. It was beyond fantastic.

Day 6

Woo hoo! We had our graduation today! We were all dressed up and there was a ceremony and everything. It was so so nice. We held hands and someone read "There's Something in These Hills." Yep, there may have been a few tears in my eyes...that one gets me every time. Then we stuffed our faces with pizza on the bus and headed back to Clemson. I didn't want to get off that bus! I didn't want the experience to end. But I know it won't,  I'll even stalk these people down if  I have to. 

Final Thoughts

Leadershape was one of the most meaningful experiences of my life. Not only did I gain new leadership knowledge, but I learned so much about myself and others. Diversity is seriously one of my favorite things and it made me so happy how much of it there was at Leadershape. I cherish being able to listen to different people's views and thoughts on things. I was also able to reflect about what I really believe in and I was able to share that with a group of people who I knew would appreciate it even if they didn't feel the same way. After attending Leadershape, I feel like a brand spankin new person. Well actually I guess I feel just purely Healy. I was able to get rid of all the clutter that's built up and clouded my sense of self and now I'm exactly me. And it feels fantastic. I guess I went into the experience hoping I'd learn a little somethin somethin about leadership and make some new friends. Little did I know that at Leadershape, you don't make friends, you make family.