Jake is a third year EXPLO student who has become a natural leader, both around campus and on the basketball court.
Life at EXPLO is awesome. I love meeting all the different people here. I meet new friends every year, and even everyday. Every single time you walk on the Quad, I feel like you can meet someone new. I love building relationships with the people here, knowing them on a more personal level, and building bounds that you can't really build elsewhere. I also like meeting people from different places and countries. I love learning about the different culture and how teenagers from different parts of the world live. One thing I noticed about kids from other countries that shocked me is that everyone plays sports! I know we Americans watch soccer, but every single kid I meet here from other countries plays soccer!
I love playing basketball with my friends outside of EXPLO. In basketball, in order to win, everyone has to be on the same page. It's a complete team effort; it can't be just one person doing it by himself. I would say I'm more of a team leader when playing basketball. It's awesome and I find a lot of joy leading people. As a leader, you have to do both strategy and management. You have to make sure that everyone on the team is happy and no one feels left out. As a leader, you also kind of become the person that others look up to. You need to make sure that when they ask you questions, you need to have the answer and be ready to help them out.
I feel that I'm practicing my leadership skills in both of my classes. In Mock Trial — I was very involved with it at my home school — I've been enjoying answering questions that other people ask me based on my past experience. In Filmmaking, I learned from my teacher that in my small filmmaking group, everyone needs to be in the film equally. So in my group, I've been trying to make sure that everyone's happy and contributing.
I love leading people. So in the future, I've been looking into doing jobs involved with leadership skills. I wanted to be a lawyer, or sports agent, or somewhere in stocks. Now I think sales would also be a good choice for me.
Sige Zheng