Becoming a Leader

            “Lead·er n- 1.somebody who guides or directs others by showing them the way or telling them how to behave 2.         somebody or something in front of all others, for example, in a race or procession”[1] This is just one way to define a leader. In my opinion, the best leaders are those who have qualities and characteristics that we chose to embody. In other words, our role models. My grandmother is my role model. Her unwavering spirit, determination, and dedication to everything she did, even in the most troubled or busy of times, are traits that I hope I can one day exemplify. Professor Bump told us that “writing about role models is to inspire the composition of self and the construction of character.”[2] With the use of Second Life, we were able to construct our role model using our sympathetic imagination, and by doing so, we became our role model. Although I was terrified of using Second Life and of trying to recreate someone who means so much to me, I was grateful for this experience. Even though I do not feel like I truly know how to use Second Life after all of that, it did help me change my reasoning behind the paper. It was not for academic reasons anymore. It was all for my grandmother. It was all for helping me on the pilgrimage to become the leader I want to be- a leader just like my grandmother.

            In order to understand why I picked my grandmother as my role model, I would like to explain her exceptional personality as a leader. “My grandmother, Margaret Ann Cardwell, was a remarkable woman.”[3] She was the person who I felt to have all the answers. Ask her anything, and you would get the best advice. If you were upset about something, she would help you figure out the best solution and realize that in the scheme of things, it was not a big of a deal. She was the type of woman you wanted to follow. Not because she was controlling or demanding or you felt obligated to just because she was older and more experienced. Everyone just seemed to realize that she was almost always right. She was unstoppable, and she was able to maintain five children and a needy husband on a cattle ranch, while also teaching and being the head of the English Department at Lockhart High School. She taught her children and her students so many important lessons regarding their character. My mother constantly reminds me of one thing that her mother (my grandmother) told her as she was growing up, and it still holds true in my mother’s heart. “The most important job of a parent is to raise healthy and happy individuals.”[4] My grandmother wasn’t trying to raise children who would necessarily follow in her footsteps. Instead, she was trying to raise them to go after their own goals in life, knowing that they could accomplish anything that they wanted. My four uncles and my mother have been so successful in life because of the way she brought them up. That just continues to show what a leader she was. She helped them open their wings so one day they could fly. Henry Miller said, “The real leader has no need to lead- he is content to point the way.”[5] My grandmother was not the type of leader to just take charge of a situation; instead, she was the type who guided you in the right direction while letting you figure things out on your own. Because of my grandmother’s guiding hand, “I was introduced to ideas and became aware of their potential. It was then, indeed, that I first became aware, which indubitably changed my life.”[6] That is what, in my mind, represents a true leader. A leader is not someone who just “guides or directs others by showing them the way or telling them how to behave.”[7] A leader is someone who merely helps you to find your own path. And thankfully for my mother and my four uncles, their mother was that kind of leader. And thankfully for the rest of my extended family, her values rubbed off of her children, which have in turn, rubbed off on us.

            My grandmother’s leadership qualities were not the only wonderful traits about her. She was also such a compassionate woman, even in troubled times. Being married to a cattle rancher who was not fervent in any other aspect of his life besides his work was difficult. He never told his family he loved them, so my grandmother made up for that by constantly reminding her children of her unconditional love for them. She ran that household in Lockhart, Texas with a firm, yet gentle, hand. She knew what was right, and what was wrong, and she made sure her children knew it too. “Beneath [her] gentle demeanor-- [she] was the soul of kindness—were principles as strong as iron, not to mention [her] will.”[8] In that cattle ranch home, it was my grandmother’s “will be done”[9]. To most people, they would understand that as her being extremely bossy. That was not the case at all. She was anything but bossy. My mother tells me to this day that my grandmother ran one of the most efficient households she had ever seen. Everyone had their jobs to tend to on the ranch, and my grandmother made sure that these jobs got done. If one of her children did something wrong, they would be punished, but only in the most fair way possible.

Looking at her life as it was then, she never stopped working. She would wake up around six in the morning to fix breakfast for seven. Once the dishes were cleaned, off she would go to Lockhart High School for a full day of teaching. She came home late in the afternoon, and would help her children with their homework if they needed it. She made every dinner by scratch, which almost always included some type of red meat (they did live on a cattle farm after all), vegetables, a salad, and something delicious she made for dessert. My grandfather never helped cook the meat- all he did was raise the cattle it came from. She did it all. Because of their love of red meat, my uncle still jokes about what my grandfather said about meat- “If you are served chicken, make sure to remember that the person who served it to you doesn’t like you.”[10] After dinner, it was back to the books. My grandmother would start grading papers, and she typically stayed up until one or two every night doing so. And the cycle continued. How she was able to do everything she did with such little sleep I will never understand. But that’s just the kind of woman she was. She was dedicated to her life as a wife, a mother, and a teacher, and she was determined to do whatever it took to balance her jobs.

When it came time to use Second Life, I was extremely nervous. “I am not very technologically advanced, so the idea of programming a computer character to look like my grandmother terrified me.”[11] The reason behind my timid attitude towards Second Life was that I was fearful that I wouldn’t represent my grandmother to my fullest potential. I wanted her to be perfect on Second Life, because in my mind, she was perfect in real life. I created my Avatar to look like her the best I could, but I was nervous it just wasn’t enough. [12] Sitting down to personify my grandmother in Avatar form in front of the classmates in my discussion group was very nerve-wracking for me. At first, it was difficult for me to open up. I wasn’t sure exactly how I should act with the other Avatars in my group[13], and it felt awkward for me trying to talk and act like my grandmother would have acted. But once we started going, it was hard to stop. I got more and more confident in my abilities to become my grandmother, and I think it definitely became apparent with the other members of the two groups I was in because I started talking much more.[14] It was very satisfying knowing that I knew my grandmother well enough to behave just like she would have.

After using Second Life and talking with the other Avatars that my classmates created to be their role models, I realized how much I had learned and how much this had benefited me without even realizing it at the time. Going from just talking about her in my first project, to creating her in Second Life and talking to other people as her, I knew that my passion for this project had changed. No longer was I writing this to try to make a good grade, no longer was this “just another paper” that I dreaded writing. No, this was now a paper that had very real emotions behind it. I will admit, I cried when I wrote Project Two. The emotions I had built up about writing about such a sensitive topic poured out of me as I wrote about someone I think about and miss on a daily basis. That

My first group conversation

is when I completely realized it. This entire project had brought back to life for me a woman that I admired more than anyone else in the world. In my heart, she was alive and breathing and protecting me. Having a project with that much power behind it was something I really needed. I understood how much she was an invaluable part of my life. And something that reassured me more than anything was to find that a part of her is in me. How else would I have been able to talk like her so easily, and understand her as well as I did in our conversations in Second Life? I tried getting back on Second Life, just to see my grandmother alive again, even though it was only a computer-generated image of her. After getting on, I knew that for a brief amount of time I was able to

Jimmie and I on Second Life

move around in this virtual world and somewhat understand it; but now I know I didn’t really learn very much on exactly how to work Second Life as a computer game. I learned how to work it emotionally, but as far as flying around the University of Texas Tower or teleporting to other places- I can forget trying to do that again. But I’m all right with that. I retained the most valuable thing I learned in Second Life- finding out that a part of my grandmother still lives inside of me.

How I was able to personify my grandmother was by using sympathetic imagination. “The sympathetic imagination is the ability of a person to penetrate the barrier which space puts between him and his object, and, by actually entering into the object, so to speak, to secure a momentary but complete identification with it.”[15] I penetrated the barrier I had between my grandmother in my heart and my grandmother in my mind, and was able to combine the two to completely become her. I took the picture of the thoughts of her I had in my mind to create an Avatar to look like her in Second Life, and I took the feelings I had about her in my heart to personify the Margaret iWish Avatar into my grandmother. When you put it to use, the sympathetic imagination can be a powerful tool in your writing. The sympathetic imagination allows you to “hammer your thoughts into unity”[16] and create a paper that combines all of your thoughts into one main purpose.

Leadership is a concept that can have so many different meanings. My pilgrimage to become the leader I strive to be- my grandmother- will not be an easy road to follow. As I read more about leadership in the lives of others, and as I write more about what I think encompasses a leader, I become one. It has been said, “you are what you eat.” In my opinion, “you are what you write.” We use writing to make our ideas and thoughts and feelings available to others. Our writing can reveal our deepest secrets, and by taking time to get them out of the back of our head and onto paper, we can start to live by how we truly think we should. By writing about my grandmother and her leadership qualities, I have already discovered that they are becoming a part of my everyday life. Even though I truly admire and respect my grandmother’s leadership capabilities, I know it is important to apply them to my life, instead of trying to live exactly how she did. The leadership qualities we admire in someone must be applied to our lives as they are now. That is how leadership is formed within our selves. You take others positive attributes and combine them with your own positive attributes to make a very strong leader, because although you are using some ideas of others, you are also using your own. By using our own ideas as well, we are more passionate about what our goals are and those with similar goals much more easily follow us. I know it will be a struggle for me to continue to combine my ideas of a good leader with the ideas that my grandmother had as well, but after writing this paper, I know it is absolutely possible.

It is not easy to become a leader that people are willing to follow. Even harder still though, it is very difficult to become the type of leader that instead of taking charge, he or she can sit back and merely help point his or her followers in the right direction. My role model, my grandmother, was this type of leader. That is the type of leader that I am striving to be. Second Life and the creation of our Avatars helped us to embody our role models, and by becoming them, we are all able to comprehend and apply their leadership traits to our own lives, making this paper much easier to write. “Writing about role models is to inspire the composition of self and the construction of character.”[17] After writing this paper, I know I have changed. I have already tried applying her leadership skills to my life, and have gotten much satisfaction in the results. I have taken her traits as a leader and as a strong, independent woman and have made them applicable to my life. My pilgrimage as a leader has taken a new road, and I am anxious to see where this road will lead my in the rest of my life. Word Count- 2, 477