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Leadership Program at UChicago for Students from Rural America
Amelie '27 Shares Her Experience
View from a boat tour of Chicago architecture, photo provided by author
I remember when Leah Hebie, Director of College Counseling, first pulled me aside and told me that she had an opportunity she wanted me to apply for. It was a program that offered seven days in Chicago at a prestigious university, focused on learning leadership skills from their professors. The program offered 100% scholarship for those accepted. The caveat? In order to apply, you must be a rising sophomore from a small, rural town with less than 15,000 residents. A free chance to spend a week at the University of Chicago with 60 other 15-year-olds from tiny towns across America? Why not?
I spent both the week leading up to the application deadline and the week leading up to the acceptance letter, un-ironically, as far from society as you can get: in the backcountry. I returned from five days in the San Rafael Wilderness with Midland to an acceptance email waiting on my Chromebook.
To be completely honest, I had no idea what this program was, but I figured I might as well jump into the deep end and accept the offer. After a summer that started slow and revved up fast, I boarded my flight with dreary eyes and high hopes for the week.
We met up in the hustle and bustle of Chicago Midway Airport and took a shuttle to campus. Coming from Midland, I started in a state of shock. My first challenge of the week was figuring out how to use a key, and once I left my room, figuring out how to get back to it in the maze that was my dorm.
The program lasted only six days, so the first days turned quickly into the last ones. Each day started with a lecture from someone who I would not have expected and ended with an activity of some sort. I was shocked that a leadership course was taking such an alternative approach by having us meet with actors from the Second City improv troupe, run around on an extravagant scavenger hunt, and go on an architectural boat tour downtown. I was far from angered by these fun days, but they were not my expectations. I spent my time pondering how they would tie this all together into a leadership course.
By the last day, I thought there would be some neat close out ceremony that tied all of the week together with a bow, but it never came. I find it difficult to describe leadership, since it means so many things in so many places. At its core, it is amorphous. I widened my view of what it can mean to be a leader, but I have no chance at all of explaining my thoughts within my 1800 word limit. Upon being asked to write this article, I realized the biggest shift within myself after this program: my view of what it really means to be from a small town versus a small community.
Despite all coming from small towns, I was shocked at the variety of experiences the other 61 students came from. A part of me assumed that we must all share some universal rural experience, but I found that Midland is not just a small community, it is one that shares a unique level of powerful connection.
University of Chicago campus, photo provided by author
I could feel the difference in relationship that these students had with their peers, and it made me appreciate the incredible support we give each other here at Midland. Through both leadership and friendship, we don’t only care about each other, we care for each other. At Midland, students do jobs that janitorial staff took care of at this program. Midland students actually wash the dishes rather than putting them onto a conveyor belt that carries them out of our view and into a pit where I know someone else is working hard. We hold each other as we cry and hug each other as we laugh. Midland, at its core, is a place sheltered enough that we can go through the awkward phases of growing up in a caring context. We can feel the tragedy of the greater world, yet we are protected from it. We can engage with the complex world we live in through the lens of learning from each other rather than shunning each other.
Going to a course designed for students from small towns showed me how incredibly lucky we are to know what it feels like to live in a close community, not just a small one. Not many know how special this is. Leadership is an ever changing thing, no one program can teach you the brunt of it. But if I learned anything from this program, I learned how much I should treasure every moment here, because not many places are like Midland.
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