Below you will find a series of questions that correspond to the weeks of your research or community engagement project. Please plan to respond to one question each week for the six weeks of your Laidlaw project. During that period, please also reply to the summer post of another Laidlaw Scholar as well. Photos, video and multimedia are always welcome, and are a required component of several posts over the course of the summer!

Week One:
Describe your Leadership-in-Action project: where will it take place, and what community will you be joining? Does the work you do this summer connect with your research last summer, and if so how? If your work this summer feels entirely different, how and why did you decide to pursue this project? Include a photograph of your room, the route you take to work, or the view from a window in your living quarters. Explain the photo (even if briefly!).

Week Two:
In your community engagement project, how do you connect with community members? What kinds of conversations are you having, and what common cause do you find? Meeting new people and beginning a new project is exciting, but can also be stressful. As you set out on your community engagement project, what are you most concerned about, and what resources or tools might you use to address these concerns? Add in photos and videos as you like!

Week Three:
What does a typical day look like for you? Has your work in a community to this point introduced you to any new fields or topics that are of interest to you?  How, if at all, has your work narrowed since the beginning of the project? Aside from a narrative description, upload a photo of your workplace, a video and/or another media submission!

Week Four:
Joining a new community isn't only about work! How do you spend your free time, and what do you do for fun? Upload a photo and include a narrative that describes a moment when you learned something new, tried something new, or connected with someone new as part of your Laidlaw experience.

Week Five:
What new skills and/or knowledge have you gained from your summer experience? Have you met anyone who has been instrumental in shaping/helping you conduct your project? Briefly, how has this person impacted you? What have you learned about leadership from this individual and/or from your adopted community and how might it influence your actions, work, and self in the future? Add in photos and videos as you like!

Week Six:
For your final post, upload a video presentation to our site. In your presentation, please discuss your project: why did you become interested in it, what was the goal of the project, what was its significance or impact (real or potential). Finally, please consider how your understanding of leadership (curiosity, empathy, teamwork, resilience, etc.) has informed your work or been deepened by your work.

Things to keep in mind while recording: do not speak too quickly! Try to record in a quiet space with minimum background noise. While you should not read from a sheet of paper, practice your speech a few times before recording. Also, be sure that you describe your project in a way that is accessible to viewers who are not experts in your field, and who may not be familiar with your project. Your video should be relatively short–2-5 minutes is ideal!

We encourage you to use these blog posts as a way to reflect on this new experience, and as a record of your work. Your blogs will be useful to you in the future, as you may choose to write or speak about your Leadership in Action summer in future applications, whether for jobs, or for future fellowships. Leadership is always an interesting topic, and this summer will give you unique examples to share!