Developing Leadership Skills Through PTK

by Annie Liu

The straightforward path of getting an A in a college course requires you to attend class, do your homework and ace your exams. By doing so, you will gain a lot of knowledge and understanding about the world, however very rarely do you get to apply the things you learn from your professor and your textbooks in real life. Sooner or later, we all will need to be able to communicate with people, have leadership skills, be able to work in teams, etc. These are things that being a member of Phi Theta Kappa can help.

Phi Theta Kappa underlines four hallmarks for its members: leadership, service, fellowship and scholarship. All four hallmarks are very beneficial to any member who seizes the opportunities that Phi Theta Kappa offers. Personally, I am excited to improve my communication and leadership skills. I believe that it will not only be helpful towards reaching my career goals, but also to grow as an individual.

One big opportunity that Phi Theta Kappa offers for its members is to be able to participate in projects that help our school directly through the College Project. Doing so requires development of creativity to think of ways to solve the problems, diligence to persevere and accomplish the goal, and interpersonal skills to work with not only the other members on the team but everyone in LaGuardia Community College and the community.

Likewise, the Honors in Action project is another opportunity that Phi Theta Kappa offers for its members to develop great communication and leadership skills. It is a project where us members choose a topic as a team and research it throughout the summer. Then, we plan events to showcase our learnings from our research. This project allows us to actively cultivate and display our leadership skills that we need to apply in our academics, career and life.