Howdy! It was another beautiful day in Edinburgh, Scotland. Today was our last day of class at the University! We finished off our course on leadership and sustainability with our project presentations. In the past few days, each group of students has put together either a social action campaign, social enterprise, or intrapreneurship presentation to demonstrate and use leadership skills discussed and developed through the week’s program. We are extremely grateful for all of the University faculty’s effort in teaching us this past week, especially Professor Hermiston’s guidance throughout the final stages of our projects.
Today was the culmination of all our work and learning from the week. Each group aimed to solve a variety of local issues including tackling homelessness through vocational training schools and job placement, creating awareness of the inadequate pay for grad students through a podcast, protecting both cars and animals from road kill with new driving software, creating a donut shop for people with diabetes, and increasing bicycle and pedestrian greenspace at Texas A&M. These projects were so much fun to create and present and really showed us how collaboration makes larger impacts achievable.
After presentations, we reflected on the three roles in our ideation process: the dreamer, the realist, and the critic. We found these three responsibilities work together as a group to fulfill specific niches and contribute to an overall well-rounded project. These projects also allowed us to practice public speaking and presenting in groups, pushing aside nervousness and presenting in a clear, concise manner to sell our pitches.
After a long morning of hard work and presenting, we finally had lunch (provided by the university): sandwiches, wraps, fruit, brownies (very good), and soda.
The final celebration of our hard work this week in Scotland was the Graduation ceremony (we did it!!!!). We received certificates of completion and got to take pictures with our wonderful professor, Ms. Susan, thanking her for all her instruction throughout this past week.
Then we dispersed for our “talk back” with Dr. Nic, one of Texas A&M’s finest faculty members, and a true patriot of public speaking. We reflected on how working together as groups went. We all seemed to share the same sentiment about how grateful we were to have a group where all members contributed to the task and were motivated to complete the mission instead of slacking off. We had conversations about what it means to be selfish (which uncovered no real dichotomy between selfishness and selflessness– kinda crazy).
To cap off the day, we went our separate ways! Some went to the food festival to eat gelato, fried chicken, dumplings, etc. Others went to the meadows to play football and frisbee.
Finally, we came back to the university for dinner (because we need all the free meals we can get) and finished off the night with some card games and a birthday celebration for Aryan (yay eighteen!!! Everyone says Whisky!)
See y’all in London!!
-Charles, Rian, & Cami
