What is more important, career, friends, or family? Some of you will say career, because with a career you can take care of your family and stand up among your friends as the successful one. Others will say friends, because their friends were there when they were passing through tough moments or because they feel connected to them. I will say family first, because one,that is how I was taught, and second because family is irreplaceable no matter what happens and one should always hold your family strong.

One important quality of the Universities at Shady Grove that I recently discovered is that it creates more than just intellectual and well-reasoned candidates for our future, it creates “families of leaders” that work hard to make life of the student a better experience. These leaders are students just like every other student, with classes, part-time jobs, goals, and career aspirations. They dedicate and meticulously arrange their schedule to work and assure that the life of students attending USG remains as tremendous as their degree.

This “family of leaders” was not just a coincidence, but the work of the diligent effort of the staff members of the Office of Student Service. One of those efforts is Student Leadership dinner, which allows leaders to connect and create ties that can be used professionally, amicably, and scholarly. Student Leaders were exchanging not only contacts but conversations, experiences, ideas, or even future cooperation.

In my case, as a member of the Student Council I talked about one of the events that our organization was hosting which is called “Hunger Banquet”. It is an event to raise awareness of hunger and show the inequality of food distribution on a local national and international level. The goal is to be able to motivate the community to stand for measures to help eradicate this scourge in our society. So whenever you are free please come and visit, bring you family members, friends, and colleagues, it is on November 15 from 5pm-7pm, building II.

After leaving USG, I will forever remember the dinners, the events, the people, the knowledge, the experience and the family. This is what it means to be a USG leader.

“Do not go where the path may LEAD instead, go where there is no path and leave a TRAIL”. Ralph Waldo Emerson.