Did the leadership minor help you in that application interview process?
Absolutely. It absolutely did. Once I had got accepted on paper they wanted to
bring me in for the interview, so I went to Knoxville for my interview at UT
Medical Center on the orthopedic trauma surgery unit working in
orthopedics and being a nurse assistant alongside orthopedic techs. And the nurse
manager who's the hiring manager for that unit (right) and you know brought me
in for the interview and she's overlooking my resume and you know at
the top of your resume it's usually the first thing. It's your name and then
education and so it said biology major pre-med, leadership studies minor. And so
she's like hmm leadership studies a minor? I've never heard of that. What's
that about?And I'm like hmm, funny you should ask because I just had so much to
talk about and so I just said, "well, it's about leadership" and I just started
going into everything that we went over in several of the different courses and
things that we learned and Stephen Covey, and John Maxwell and by the end of that
interview she was taking notes. She was like "who is that, Stephen Covey?" and "how
do you spell that, as a C? Oh a K, K as in Kelsey, okay. John Maxwell. And what's the name of that book?
Seven habits of..." and she was taking notes and asking me questions and it was just
funny it turned in from her interviewing me for the job to me telling her
information about being a leader and she's on me literally she was just
taking notes all through our interview and it turned into me teaching her what
I had learned through my leadership studies minor and she had said oh my
goodness you I mean I've never done this before but you have the job. You
absolutely have the job. You can bring so much to us and we have a unit council
and I'll absolutely you need to be a part of that oh I'm so glad you're here
I'm so glad you came in.
Going in to leadership minor thought well I already see myself as a leader
why do I need to take classes on becoming a leader when I already see
myself as a pretty good leader. Oh I was kind of wrong. I mean I still saw myself
as leader but I gained so much on how to enhance that (right) and how there's no
right or wrong way to leadership and I guess right or wrong styles of
leadership. There can be different styles and your style can flex to, I guess,
benefit your followers versus expecting your followers to flex to you know
benefit you and your specific leadership styles and so I learned how to be a
better leader and what a leader truly is and the theories of leadership. So it
proved me wrong.
I realized wow. I mean I knew that I was taking a lot out of it once I got
through it but never would have imagined that this is so relative to my field that
I'm going into and honestly, I mean I believe that any field that anyone's
going to go into whether it be health care, whether it be business or something
else education, that leadership studies minor is going to benefit you
one way or another absolutely and it did for me.