9-11: Asian Pacific America Recounts a Year of Struggle and Healing (Feature) Who’s Getting the Message? (in National News) Putting Our Health Center Stage (in Bay Area News) Ultimate Diversions: Kingdom Hearts (in Business) Chinese American Volleyball Tournament Comes to San Francisco (in Sports) Collateral Damage: ‘Asian Americans On War & Peace’ (in A&E) Emil Amok: Chicken-hearted Patriotism in Fremont (in Opinion)

Losing My Shyness

Climbing up the high hills of the Marin Headlands in hot weather, my big backpack loaded with a sleeping bag, tent, clothes and other necessities, I felt sweaty under the hot sun. My shoulders and hips were sore, and my face was flushed. I was exhausted. I was a little sick even before the trip began, but that didn’t get in my way. I had not been camping before, but I enjoyed it because I like new experiences, especially challenging ones. While climbing up the steep hills, I kept saying to myself, “Come on, Anna, one more mile to go — this is the last chance for you to experience this trip before school starts.”

I didn’t feel like talking much, so I observed my surroundings and thought about the things I would discover, experience and learn this summer.

These were my impressions during the Wilderness Experience, the first component of Exploring Leadership — a youth leadership training program hosted in the summer by Coro Northern California. Coro is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that provides experiential leadership training to groups of diverse leaders at different stages of their professional development. The proprietary curriculum involves internships, group participation, interviews and seminars. Exploring Leadership is for rising 11th and 12th graders who are interested in expanding their leadership skills by examining community issues and existing public leadership. I was one of 17 students from different public and private high schools in San Francisco who participated in the program this summer.

One personal challenge I wanted to address during the training program was my shyness. This ties into my desire to improve my communication skills. My English vocabulary is limited, since my parents and I speak Cantonese at home. When I talk, I fear that I will say something wrong, or that I will talk too fast or too slow, and that people will not understand what I am saying. How can I be a leader if I am shy? Since I always want to learn as much as possible, I was willing to tear away my shyness and take a risk by stepping forward and talking to some of the youth fellows and eventually to the staff as well. I wanted to hear about their background and to share my background with them. Coro provided me with many opportunities to interact with my colleagues and to practice my public speaking skills.

Before Coro, I did not know the definition of leadership, nor had I examined what it means to me. What does it mean to be a leader? I kept on thinking about the word — I even looked it up in dictionaries and encyclopedias. I never really encountered the word leadership in my life before, but after understanding its meaning, I fell in love with it. It’s a word that I have been searching for. An educated person told me that leadership consists of three main things: knowledge, communication and concern. I agree.

Coro provided me with special “tools” that are going to be useful throughout my life. The one tool that had the most impact on me is “DKDK,” which means, “You don’t know what you don’t know.” This idea applies to the things in life that I don’t even expect to know or even think about. To me, there is a lot more to life besides the things that I “know I don’t know” (KDK). It’s when the others start talking that you learn something you may have never thought of asking before. That is what I have been thinking this whole year and also throughout this summer. I don’t want to just think about my point of view, but to try to understand what other people are thinking about too.

If you are interested in learning more about Exploring Leadership and Coro’s other programs, check out their website at www.coro.org.