Empathy key trait for Ocoee High student body president

After serving as one of the vice presidents of the Student Government Association of Ocoee High School, I was elected as student body president. From being vice president, I’ve learned the responsibilities and the expectations of what it takes to be an officer for an organization that represents the whole student body.

As I continue to grow through my leadership journey, one attribute sticks with me through every obstacle — empathy.

Empathy is more than just understanding how others feel. When it applies to leadership in school, it’s not easy to put myself in every student's place because everyone feels differently about everything. With almost 2,500 students attending the school, there are a lot of mixed opinions.

Most of the time, I’m usually planning events so I don’t get firsthand experience of attending the event.

Looking back on my presidential campaign at the end of my junior year, I had one goal in mind — to make students and staff feel heard and seen. As a student, everyone wants to feel seen and nobody wants to feel like they’re in the shadow.

At some point, every student has felt alone, so when campaigning, it was my goal to make everyone feel like they had a voice. With such an important role, it’s my purpose to give others what they need, and it all starts with empathy.

Even since my vice president role, empathy was something that surrounded me throughout my many projects. With every big project, I would always put my mind in the place of someone who was seeing the project for the first time.

“How would they react at the event?” “Would they have fun at the event, or would they get bored?” “What makes students more likely to attend?”

All of these questions are things I would ask myself in the planning stage because there needs to be a set of interests that would make students want to attend. As I continued to learn more about the strategic planning of events, more underlying lessons would latch on to develop me into a better leader.

When I was elected as the student body president, all the lessons I learned stuck with me, but my whole view changed on what it meant to be a leader. As the VP of Clubs and Organizations, I represented the organizations that fostered the school. But as the newly elected president, it meant more than organizations; it meant representing all the students attending the school. This changed two key factors: How do I represent each student in the school and give him or her what is needed, and what can I do to make everyone feel heard?

As I continue to grow as a leader, those two questions replay in my mind throughout all of the planning. Through every pep rally, every conference and every class, I believe empathy is an important lesson every aspiring leader should learn. Representing the whole student body isn’t easy, but from what I’ve learned, I can make a difference in every student's life, even if it’s small.