Meredith College held a Leadership Conference on their campus to help teach high school leaders how to correctly handle situations and expand their knowledge on proper leader etiquette. Each student was able to attend three different classes of their liking. They hosted an array of classes ranging from ‘Conflict, Conflict Styles, and Communication’ that teach students how to approach difficult disputes to ‘Healthcare Professions’ which offered teenagers the proper precursor knowledge for their future careers.

“[‘Healthcare Professions’] was a brief seminar that was taught by the Pre-Med advisor about how to prepare yourself for medical school while you are in undergrad,” said Amelia Davidson, leadership participant. “Since I am planning on going to medical school, this was a very informative and vital seminar for me to attend. As a final activity, we worked on writing personal statements, a part of a medical school application.”

There were approximately six seminars to choose from. Each student got to choose the first and last seminar they wanted to attend. All were required to attend the second seminar.

“The first thing I went to was ‘Personal Leadership Putting First Things First’ and basically what we talked about there were different things you could talk about as far as learning not to procrastinate and learning what comes first in your life, like how to balance school, your social life and relationships,” said Laurie Diggett, leadership participant.

According to Diggett they each got three objects. The first of these being an ornament which was supposed to represent breakable things in your life, things that you could mess up really easily. The next object was a ball that didn’t bounce, which represented the more spiritual side of you. The last object was a tennis ball which represented all the things in your life that you waver in decisions with, it could be your career choice or something along those lines.

“The other seminar I went to was ‘confident leadership’ where we learned about how to talk to people, how to not be shy,” said Diggett “How to speak in front of an audience and how to get our point across better. And we learned how we can not only help other people become more confident but give ourselves self-esteem and understand the media and bias and understand that we all don’t have to feel like we have to fit in.”

‘True Colors’, which was a mandatory second seminar, is one of the many seminars that students attended while learning how to become better leaders.This leadership conference taught the students essential qualities.

“[It was just like] any stereotypical type of leadership experience,” said Davidson. “This can include conflict handling, confidentiality, and public speaking development.”