Reflections
My leadership skills developed in various ways throughout the course of this project. Skills I improved were organization, time management and tackling big projects. Having to memorize so many different plant names forced me to create my own organizational system. I made a flash card for every plant I needed to know with the basic information I needed. I also had a notebook full of ways to associate each plant with its scientific name and tricks to help distinguish “look-alike” plants. Time management was something I really struggled with in the beginning. After realizing I was severely underestimating the amount of time the project I initially planned would take, I really had to take a step back and evaluate the way I viewed time. Prior to my self evaluation, I believed I could just always make more time for things I wanted to get done. After becoming overwhelmed, having to admit I bit off more than I could chew, and altering my EDGE project, I finally learned to allot an appropriate amount of time for the tasks at hand. A big part of improving my time management skills was improving my ability to break big tasks into smaller ones. Instead of saying I had to learn 200 plants, I would say I need to learn 15-20 plants a week, or 2 plants a day.
The biggest insight I gained about leadership, was the power of being honest with myself. I found this out the hard way. After being extremely realistic with myself about the disconnect between what I wanted to do, and what I was actually accomplishing I was able to successfully complete my project with my sanity intact. After reevaluating the thought process I was originally using I had mixed emotions. At first I was mad, even borderline sad that I had been going about things the wrong way. Eventually these feelings subsided into general frustration about having a set back. By the middle of my project I felt at peace with the choices I had made, and fulfilled by the fact that I overcame my biggest obstacle… myself.