Students felt warmth and kindness at Wichita State University on Tuesday despite the cold

weather surrounding them.

Through various break-out sessions at WSU’s SAS Leadership Conference, gifted reality 101

students learned more about themselves and how to exhibit leadership in every aspect of their

lives.

The day began once everyone arrived to the WSU campus and participated in an icebreaker

activity with the attending students from other schools. Students played bingo and the winners

received a prize of an expandable water bottle.

After the ice breaker, students went to three 35 minute break-out sessions that the students

chose prior to arriving. One session featured county commissioner Lacey Cruse who told

students how she embraced the hardships she faced in life to get where she is today. Another

session entitled “Communication is Key” had students pair up with someone they didn’t know

and describe to them how to draw a specific picture. There were many other sessions along

with these that most students thought were fascinating.

“I liked Own You because the speaker was really good and her life was super cool,” freshman

Kyli Bailey said.

After students had a break for lunch, they came back for an interactive session. In this session

students worked with the people at their table to build a lego set. Only one student at a time was

allowed to look at the intended finished product and relay it back to their team. But there was

one catch: that person couldn’t talk or touch the legos once they had seen what it was supposed

to look like.

“The lego challenge was really stressful because we couldn’t talk or touch the legos so we had

to find different ways to communicate what the group was supposed to do. It was interesting to

see how different groups came up with different methods of getting their point across though,”

said freshman Vy Nguyen.

Once this session was over, everyone attended a keynote presentation. During this presentation

students learned that leadership and success aren’t about what you achieve, but rather whether

or not you try again when you don’t succeed at something the first time.

But the event wasn’t all large group activities. People made new friends and hung out with old

ones. All in all, the Derby students appeared to have a great time at the event while also

learning more about exhibiting leadership qualities.