I am a vastly different person leaving the Laidlaw Scholars Program than I was entering. Whether that’s due to the program itself, or the broader passage of time, is hard to say. I likely have some combination of the two to thank.
It feels like a disservice to myself, both the person I’ve become and the one I’m becoming, to methodically respond to every part of every prompt detailing what exactly it is I’m supposed to accomplish in the 750-1000 words (now 670-920) of this blog. Treating this blog in that way would be a disservice to the program too. Because what works so well about the Laidlaw Scholars program—in my experience, I suppose—is not the regimented answering of questions. My most transformative moments occurred during bouts of unstructured thinking. While the organized program components—colloquium sessions, a mandatory class, the Oxford Character Project—provided me with fuel for intensive reflection, it was when I was wholly on my own, allowed to wander freely towards the questions, and fears, emerging from the innermost parts of my mind, that I gained the most clarity regarding my character, my curiosities, and the sources and goals of my ambition.
It’s important to note, however, that I never would have had those transformative, internal moments without the Laidlaw Foundation and the Hart Leadership Program. The most profound of my reflections occurred during my two summer experiences, both part of the program. The professional skills and capacities I gained during these summers are, of course, invaluable—and yet, what I value the most has nothing to do with the particulars of the research or work I was engaging with. It was curling up on a couch in a dimly lit cottage in Cape Town reading Nabokov, just feet away from my research mentor clacking away at her keyboard, working on legal matters of the utmost importance. It was sitting, over the course of eight weeks, at the same table—the two-top next to the window with vines creeping in from its rightmost edges, the wood of the table warped with time—in my favorite coffee shop I discovered in Madison, WI, drinking the same cortado out of the same cup, watching myself slowly, week by week, day by day, moment by moment, gain a sort of clarity of self I’ve been longing for with unabated intensity for as long as I can remember. It was the lingering feeling of warmth that washed over me as Albie Sachs embraced me in the entryway to his home, his short arm caressing my head—an unforgettable goodbye following the Shakshouka brunch he shared with my team and me. It was the first deep breath I took on each plane ride home from my summer experiences, each one filled with an indescribable swirl of emotions, learnings, ideas, and relief.
I’m realizing now, or at least am consciously acknowledging a feeling I’ve carried for a while, that I took this program for granted more than I would like to admit: at times, assignments felt like just another thing to do. But in every component, no matter how little I wanted to attend or engage with it at the time, I gained something—an idea, a quote, a conversation—that made it all worthwhile. Throughout my time in this program, I’ve come to realize how simultaneously expansive and intimate my approach to leadership, and the world, is. I’ve learned to approach problems at the systems level and think globally. At the same time, I’ve learned of the power in human connections, and seen firsthand that leadership is a deeply human endeavor. I’m nowhere near understanding how to manage these two truths, but the Laidlaw Scholars Program has allowed me to grasp them a little tighter, letting me test the weight of their power before bearing that burden on my own.
I’ve not yet figured out what path I’ll take in the immediate future, or what my leadership and career journey will shape up to be. While this program has not given me an answer to what it is I’ll do with my life (an unreasonable ask, I understand), it has given me the tools to ask stronger questions and guide myself towards that evolving answer. At the end of my LiA summer, in a response to my final letter home, my program coordinator built on my own musings in one of the most impactful takeaways from this entire experience: “We have not lived these lives before; we are creating each moment in its own time and with no foreknowledge of how it’s all going to go. So, how then can we hold ourselves hostage to a notion of how an experience was meant to turn out?” There is no way my experience was meant to go, nor is there a particular path I am meant to take as I walk my leadership journey. I am so happy my experience turned out this way, and I thank the Laidlaw Scholars Program for a newfound sense of character and confidence of self as I create each approaching moment in its own time.