On one of my first days as a High School Leader at Outdoor Lab, I stood in a field clutching a blue packet titled “Site History,” scanning its tidy bullet points for guidance. In front of me, a group of sixth graders had already moved on from the script, rushing toward the hulking logs scattered across the grass, lifting them eagerly, laughing as they improvised their own system of teamwork. For a moment, I tried to steer them back to the instructions, but when I paused and watched more closely, I realized their excitement wasn’t defiance. It was curiosity. They wanted to shape the experience themselves. So, I closed the packet. I told them that if they promised to wear gloves and carry the logs safely with a partner, I would add obstacles—like jumping over an imaginary creek—to their journey across the field.
That small pivot has stayed with me during my first year at UC Berkeley. Outdoor Lab taught me that leadership is rarely about perfect plans. More often, it begins with paying attention to the people in front of you and adjusting the moment so they can meet you halfway. I’ve found myself returning to that lesson while mentoring children through the Down Syndrome Community Outreach club on campus. Each week, I tutor a student over Zoom in reading comprehension. Our lessons rarely follow the worksheet exactly as written. When his focus starts to drift, I pull up the Zoom whiteboard and draw a quick tic-tac-toe grid. For every question he answers, he earns a square. The promise of placing the next X or O is often enough to get through “just one more” exercise. Before long, we’ve finished an entire page, and he’s leaning forward in his chair, asking if we can play another round.
I’m also part of a campus club called Paper Crane, where we assemble art kits for children staying at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. On Wednesday evenings, we sit around long tables folding origami paper, sorting markers into sets, and packing everything into bright yellow envelopes. A few weeks later, nurses sometimes send photos back to our club: a child coloring a paper plate in a hospital bed, another holding up a finished pipe cleaner flower with an IV pole just out of frame. Seeing those pictures makes the quiet assembly-line work feel suddenly vivid. Something we packed on a campus table has traveled into someone’s hospital room and made the afternoon a little less lonely.
Looking back, Outdoor Lab gave me more than a week in the mountains. It showed me how powerful quiet leadership can be. Sometimes it looks like guiding a group of children across a field of logs. Sometimes it looks like tutoring a student through a difficult paragraph, or packing an art kit for a hospital room. Wherever I go, I carry that lesson with me, and I remain deeply grateful to Outdoor Lab for offering the first sketch of how to guide these precious moments.
