Week 14
Presentation One: Hercules
OMG, I LOVE THIS FREAKING MOVIE HOLY CRAP NOODLES.
Anyways, I had fun with today’s presentation! Hercules is one of my favorite movies ever, so it was nice to revisit it through a leadership lens.
Assignment
As you can tell, there weren’t a lot of similarities between the two support systems
- I’ve never really had a special goal that I’ve worked towards, to be honest, my thing is more just tripping into stuff and calling it a day.
- Again, nothing really comes to mind. I’ve had a pretty boring life so far. I guess the closest I’ve seen to a heroic act is my teachers in high school letting me turn work in late, or letting me leave class when I had panic attacks and stuff.
- I don’t have any heroes, not yet anyway.
Leadership Development
I think what makes a hero is a want to do good, and then going out and doing that good, at personal cost to yourself. For example, superheroes who fight villains, at a risk to their own health, or people who run non-profit animal rescues, putting them in a financially unstable position. I think a good leader is always a hero, and but a hero isn’t always necessarily a good leader, because good leaders have to be willing to sacrifice for the good of their goal, like heroes, but heroes don’t have to undertake the same responsibilities that a leader has to, like maintaining relationships and being a good mentor. The best thing I can do to be a hero is just to always strive to be a good person, and treat others well, even if that sometimes hurts me.
Into the Spiderverse
Another classic, oh my god. Ok first off, I just have to really emphasize that leap of faith scene at the climax of the movie, like holy crap that scene is just pure gold, it’s the height of cinema.
Assignment
How do the people in miles’ life affect how he sees himself? How do the people in your life influence and affect how you see yourself?
Ok so probably the best answer and example for this question would be the scene towards the end when Miles’s dad comes to visit him in the dorms and gives him the pep talk that helps him take control of his powers and take the leap of faith. Miles’s family, and by extension, his spider family, help him realize his full potential by encouraging him to be himself because he already has that spark of true potential. For me, there was a very similar dynamic in my family growing up, where I was always pushed to fulfill my potential, I mean, I was in the gifted program since the 1st grade, I’ve always been told I was a genius since I was a kid. It didn’t affect me the same way it did Miles, however, mostly because while that pressure was there, the support I needed to understand my potential and cope emotionally just wasn’t there, plus I had both a somewhat rocky home life, and a non-existent social life after 5th grade and on.
How does the dynamic of multiple spider-mans affect his ability to actualize himself as spider-man?
It makes Miles question his own potential, especially with the pressure the other spider-mans were pressuring him to be a leader but not giving him the emotional support he needed to get there (which he eventually got from his dad).
In the movie we see multiple leaders attempt to be leader. How do you lead a group of leaders?
By having the most experience and being able to reconcile everyone’s skills and differences with each other, so they work well with one another.
We come to understand that Miles felt like an outsider until he met the other spidermen. Reflect upon a time where you felt you were an outsider. Did you find your sense of belonging within a particular community? How did the people in that community affect your leadership? How was it similar to Miles Morales and his relationship with the other spidermen? How was it different?
I’m just always an outsider honestly. Sure I’ve engaged with other people and had friends, but I’ve never quite felt like part of a community, there was always just something missing. The only times that it's been better have really been when I make a friend and we end up being close, like my friend El from England, or Ethan from Massachusetts, but they’re almost always online friends. I haven’t really had the opportunity to engage in leadership, so I can’t really speak to how they affected my leadership. I guess if I look at the debate community specifically, I did have sort of a family there, and while I wasn’t exactly a leader, I was a mentor. I would say that the dynamic there is almost exactly like Miles’s relationship to the other spidermen in the way that we were all sort of independent because of the way our debate event functioned, but outside of the debate rounds we would work together and hang out.
