Jesse Meza

UNIV 392
Scott Harris
24th July 2015
I Am a Leader

Nearing the end of Loyolas SEaL (Summer Enrichment at Loyola) program,

the summer was beginning to wind down. The students up to this point in their
program had been gaining useful academic skills that they would be using upon
returning to their respective schools. However, the students hadnt received what
we as the College Coaches believed would be the representative message of the
summer. That being said, I felt the impulse to ask the staff if I could give a
motivational speech. Having done this last year and seen good results, it felt in
good faith to do so. I was in the SEaL program and I connected with the
demographic that the program was intended for. Having a full scholarship to attend
University, having come from a neighborhood riddled with gang violence, talking
about my struggles and how I overcame those struggles would motivate them to
take the world on.
When the day came, I prepared a speech that represented the life that I lived
growing up in a tough neighborhood, with immigrant parents, and a multitude of
health issues. Walking up to the podium, I felt like a professor and his pupils. To a
certain extent this was correct. I was teaching these students life skills that they
would use when facing odds against them. I like to compare this viewpoint to the
Jesuits view of love-driven leadership. As Lowney described it, love driven
leadership was what led the Jesuits to Refuse no talent. (Lowney 170) Lowney
described this leadership as the ability to see the talent and optimism in all people

regardless of their background. This message engulfed my speech: I saw the great
potential in all students regardless of their background; I wanted the world to see
this potential in an effort to show that their talent was not be wasted. That being
said, the first step towards doing this was to inspire them to believe they too had
the talent I saw in them. Thus I spoke about my uncertainty to go to college, my
inability to believe that I had any potential to do so. I spoke about my diagnosis of
tremors and my downward spiral in a deteriorative mental health. More importantly,
I spoke about how I pulled myself by the roots of rock bottom and changed my
mindset towards not only viewing myself as a talented and worthy person, but to
have the outward mobility to pull others with me when doing so. As I spoke about
my motivated mindset to these students, I spoke with the eyes of seeing these
students potential to achieve their deepest endeavors. I remember speaking with a
specific line as I wrapped up my speech. With all the glaring eyes from both my
fellow College Coaches and students, I said that if could simply inspire one of the
students to feel like they could take on the world, then my job would have been
achieved for the summer.
Following the speech, a student came up to me with a look of amaze in her
eyes. With a smile on her face, she said Your job is done. In this moment a feeling
of epiphany fell over me as I stared out in the distance, looking out the windows of
McCormick Lounge and out onto the lake. Much talk had gone into the job of a
College Coach as being a leadership position. Up until that very moment the
thought of being a true leader seemed very wishy washy. But I felt like a leader. My
fellow CCs and students looked at me as a leader who grew up in the rough: a place
of desperation where the odds were against me but nonetheless was looking
forward to a bright future. A leader who wanted to see others do the same. A leader

who was love-driven as the Jesuits were and saw great potential in their being
despite the pasts the may have lived. I have held many leadership positions, having
even been a College Coach last year, but this time I felt like a true leader. I felt like a
true leader because I had concrete evidence that someone had been affected by
the words of wisdom I gathered over the years from watching my favorite
motivational speakers on YouTube videos. This was it. This was the representation of
the summer. And as the CCs and students filed out of the room and went on to
lunch, the only words that I could murmur in my head was that I was a leader, and
that my job is done