A Wonderful Experience
Vikrant N A
2004
A high school student shares Student Fellows Program highlights and experiences.
This summer from July 12 to16, 2004, I had the opportunity of attending the 1st annual Student Fellows Program in the hope of learning some valuable ideas on how to help my school start their own Student Ethics Office. I was fortunate in receiving much more than just a few lines of information… I took back a whole new experience that has enriched my personality and left a permanent mark on my memory.
The days I spent at the SFP were full of learning and enjoyment. The warmth with which everyone treated each other was especially a very comforting factor in a new environment. From the word go, the organizers of the program showed us that being an Ethics Officer is all about listening to one and other, appreciating and welcoming everyone's opinion, being confident and forming balanced judgments that would help everybody. All of these characteristics focused on the fact that when one is striving to achieve a common goal it is always beneficial to work as a cohesive team and it is very important that we trust each other. These factors were reinforced to us almost daily through various group activities and icebreakers we took part in. The friendship that developed amongst all of us, as a result of this, was extremely visible when we did an activity in which everyone had to write down a fact about him or herself, that not even their closest friends would know. These facts were then subsequently read aloud during the course of the day. I felt that this really re-affirmed the trust we all had in each other to such an extent that we didn't mind disclosing embarrassing details about ourselves to people whom we had met just a couple of days ago.
During our program we also had the opportunity of visiting the Hemlock Center for Outdoor Education. Through the activities at Hemlock we learned that to reach our goal we need to rely on others in our group and if everyone completes their assignment to the best of their ability and we trust each other then nothing is out of reach. We also learned the all-important 4P's: Practice, Persevere, Patience and Prevail. The adventure at Hemlock definitely allowed everyone to bond with the children from the other schools. Just to add a little humor, I must definitely say that patience is something we definitely learned in more ways than one as on our way to Hemlock, two of the groups got completely lost and arrived around an hour late after driving down many circuitous routes!!
I feel that the Student Fellows Program allowed me to become a better leader. I thank the Ethics Resource Center for taking the initiative to institute such a program. I learned so many new and interesting things in one week, some of which convinced me to study these more carefully in college, such as business ethics and interpersonal communication. I hope to follow up this experience with an internship in the coming years, at the ERC.
Vikrant N.A.
Washington-Lee High School
