Introductory Letter

Hi everybody! My name is Valerie Tindall and I am a senior here at UCF, my major is Women’s Studies with a minor in Communications (still very undecided as to what I am going to do with the Communications minor though). I am originally from Cooper City Florida, which is a small suburb outside of Fort Lauderdale, but I’ve been living in Orlando for about seven years now. Growing up I was raised in a very feminist, liberal household so going into Women’s Studies just seemed like a very natural thing for me to do and I was very interested in the history of Women’s Studies and how everything began and where it is going today.

Defining leadership, I feel is a difficult thing to do because everyone has a different definition for it, but to me it’s about taking on the responsibility of guiding or directing people. My father always told me that I had the personality to be a military strong-arm of a small country (I’m assuming that means I’m bossy and stubborn but in a good way), and there are some days I feel like a leader and then I’m put into certain situations and I can become very shy and quiet. I am hoping this class will help bring out the leader in me all the time.

As far as being a leader right now, I am a shift supervisor at Starbucks so I am responsible for directing the baristas that I work with on what to do and how to do it and if I didn’t have strong leadership skills, it would make the job very difficult, luckily I am very good at my job. I am excited we are going to be working with a Girl Scout troop this semester. I think it’s very important for girls to have positive role models in their lives that instill a good sense of self and show them that they can be anything if they put their mind to it.

Like I said before, I was raised with a very strong feminist mother and I was always told I could do anything and be anything in life and I know I’m very fortunate in that because some girls aren’t so lucky. That’s why I think girl’s studies is so important, because it teaches us about the ways different cultures and society affect girls as a whole.
I have read, understand and agree to the terms of the course and the blogging protocols.