Daily Dose: Who leads the leaders?

When I applied to McMaster, I was told to dress myself up as a leader. “It was what the admissions committees would want in an application,” a guidance counselor stressed to me with a breath held captive by coffee beans and cigarettes.

I was confused at first – I mean, I was a twin who spent much of his life following the footsteps of his brother. Everything I did, I did together. We ranted, discussed, cried, and laughed in tandem. One day, I started the chuckles; another day he did.

Yet that day as the door closed and another student shuffled in and the raspy, smoke riddled voice croaked again, I heard the same advice repeated. “Be a leader.”

So like everyone else, I followed the leader ideal. Alongside a flurry of overinflated academic successes, ego-boosting extracirculars, and a padded resume where I became anything and everything with the click-clack of a keyboard, I was Kacper Niburski the Revolutionary, the Great, and somehow, the Humble.

To those reading my application, I’m sure that they thought that I was divinity in the flesh. I bet one person nudged another and said, “St. Peter just complained that God was acting like Kacper again.”

Over four years, though, that falsified, motivated teenager charade crumbled under the weight of self-discovery and inevitability of adulthood. No longer did I want to lead if I wasn’t right to lead. Nor did I felt compelled to at every corner. Without the stress of responsibility, I could sit at the back, doodle away, and allow my thoughts to travel in places I'd never expect them to.

What I became in this wake was something more important: a follower. Though undersold by universities and employment places, they make the foundation upon which a leader stands. Without them, and without the constant support, enthusiasm, and dialogue they offer, there is no leader for there is no one to lead.

In light of the MSU elections, we must remember our power. For though we are sometimes reduced to a talking board for candidates’ wild pitches, know that we are the reason for the election, not the result of it; we are the ones in control, not the other way around; and we are the change we want to be, not the change forced upon us.