I am currently in a student organization that occasionally puts on programming for high school students. Friday we put on a program called Leadership Retreat, in which kids from across Wisconsin came to Madison for a day to learn about leadership in high school and beyond.
A lot of people say kids will teach you more than you can ever teach them. But Friday, I learned way more from the keynote speaker. His name was Blaise Winter, and I will not soon forget him.
Blaise used to play professional football with the Packers, the Chargers and another team whose name escapes me. He strutted into the main room to give his speech and introduced himself to the students.
\I'm Blaise Winter. That's fire and ice. I'm an emotional roller coaster.""
The introduction was more suited for the first day at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, but something about him told me to keep listening. I'm glad I did because a good message, wrapped in layers and layers of crazy stories and hilarity, shone through.
Blaise was all about intensity. He would point his finger out at people in the crowd like Donald Trump giving someone the axe. With gusto he described his miserable childhood-he overcame a cleft lip and consequently a severe speech impediment. Because he was so loud and overwhelming, what were supposed to be tales of trials and tribulations sounded more like Bobby Knight freaking out at a basketball game.
But he trudged on. He told the students some people make fun of him because when he speaks for hours at a time, he is disorganized and talks about many ideas at once and in no particular order. He did exactly this Friday, speaking on a gamut of topics, including, but not limited to: seeing a man in a Viking suit, watching his grandparents dance in a Broadway show, his ""artistic"" side, playing one-on-nobody in basketball and why kids don't have to look like muscled giants. (The last one was especially humorous considering he played football and his biceps were about to burst out of his turtleneck T-shirt.)
I may be giving Blaise a hard time, but the things he taught those kids really rang true. Yes, you had to dig a little bit for the message, but when they step into college, they will have to be doing more and more of that. Indirectly, he gave a speech on how to keep a straight face while someone says, ""I am an artist, and I paint with my passion.""
Keeping it together is one of those skills everyone needs. It is the true sign of being a good leader. Although you are under pressure, the only thing to do is keep it together. Or when high school students are looking to you to be a role model, and you need to make it 45 minutes without laughing excessively at a man discussing his trip with his mother to get cinnamon rolls, all you need to do is keep it together. Those guys will figure out the other lessons in time. But that message they will use everyday for the rest of their lives. And when they are older, they can look back to a very strong man whose ""fire and ice"" attitude showed them how.
Erin Canty is a sophomore majoring in journalism. Her column runs every Monday in The Daily Cardinal. She can be reached at erincanty8285@hotmail.com.
