Sophomore Leadership Retreat!

One of the best things at IIT is the Leadership Academy. The basic aim of the academy is to train students to be good leaders and work effectively in a team. They hold seminars where they talk about important issues such as how to put your ideas across and how to deal with conflicts.

The academy helps students by giving students who have qualities of a leader a full tuition scholarship, which makes life for the student a little easier since they don't need to worry about their finances thereafter.

As a part of leadership training, the leadership academy organizes a sophomore leadership retreat every year। Sophomores go to lake Geneva Wisconsin and spend a weekend there। The entire goal of the retreat is to us train students to be leaders and overcome their fears. The students are encouraged to challenge themselves, physically and mentally. The students are divided into teams. Each team is led by a scholar.Over the next two days, people who were complete strangers at the beginning if the retreat become good friends and usually maintain their friendship even after the retreat.

I went to the retreat a week ago। I am a scholar and was leading my team with the help of another scholar. We two barely knew anyone in our group. Through the various ice breakers we became a little acquainted with each other. We came up with a team name - SQUIDS and a team cheer that went like "we've got inky power ho ha".

The first thing on the agenda was team Olympics। It was amazing to see how the entire team acted like one, encouraged each other when one would loose faith and made sure that no one felt left behind. For this reason our team hit the best resilience and most persistent team award.

After that the team went on high ropes। I have always been afraid of heights and was thinking of not taking part in the activity. My teammates encouraged me at this point of time. Thy ensured me that they would ho me down the minute I thought that the challenge was too much. I climbed up the cargo net and guess what. I had a great time there. I enjoyed the scenery from 40 feet above ground and totally loved the feeling. I was glad I went.

-Anam