First Jounal Entry -Preface-

The most difficult experience I had as a leader was when I was still in high school around age 15 or so. At that time I was really interested in acting, so even before entering into the high school I had already set my mind to join the drama club--but my dream soon sank as soon as I found out that there was no drama club in ICU High School. Although at first I gave up and joined a dance club, soon I found that dancing is not exactly the best of my interest, so as a first year student I had decided to make a drama club myself--which turned out to be an extreme burden.

First of all, it was not easy to gather the members, as basically no one had heard of such thing as 'drama club' before so people were skeptical about joining it. But what made it even more difficult for me was the teachers discouraging attitude toward my effort to build a new club. Instead of giving me support or offering for help, majority of the teachers whom I asked support or help coldly turned down my offer by saying 'I don't know if that club is really necessary' or 'I wonder if your club still exists a year later'. All of these heartless comments really made me down, and at one time I really thought about giving up. We were literally on the brink of edge.

However, to tell the conclusion first, the drama club did succeed--the members dramatically increased after the first performance, and now it is accepted as one of the club activities of ICU High School--and it still exists today (I heard they have performance a month later).

To be honest, I was not good at combining members at all. I tried to be a good leader and so made an attempt to listen to all the member's voices (as I thought that was what a 'good leader' would do), but consequently it made me look ambiguous and made the members think that I lacked in self-confidence. Therefore, when it came to making decisions, I was often criticized by members for not leading the club well. Also, I had this strong sense of responsibility,  so strong that I basically tried to handle all the problems by myself and of course that was out of my capacity so I often made mistakes which angered the members. To be fair, I did not have many qualities to be a good leader- such as decisiveness, sense of authority or charisma.

Looking back now, one thing that enabled me to attract members to stay with me was probably my excessive enthusiasm toward building the club. Even though I was severely discouraged by numerous teachers, I tried again and again--I even went to the Principle's Office to ask him to be the club teacher, as no other teachers offered to be one. Unexpectedly, he turned out to be once the manager of the drama club, and even though he could not become the manager for our club, he gave me support by giving me words of encouragement such as 'I really hope to see the drama club again'. Later on, though the change was not dramatic, the teachers started to show some sympathy toward my efforts, and then one teacher actually offered to be the manager of our club. I think my never-giving-up behavior and enthusiasm made the teachers to reconsider and enabled to keep the members to stay with me.

As the time passed, the members started to support me more actively, and I think it was because they feared that if they leave it all to me, the club would eventually collapse. Also as we spent more time together, I had started to realize that there were certain things that they were good at. I found that one of the members of the club was actually better at making decisions and leading people than I was, so I let her handle the decision making process while I did other jobs such as negotiation and campaigning around the school (the jobs which I was good at). With two leaders, the club started to function ever more smoother than before, and as a result our first performance turned out to be a success.

I think another quality I had that enabled us to pursue our goal was the strong feeling of responsibility. I had the strong feeling that I was responsible for the success of the club, and that strong feeling made me able to endure difficulties and drove me to do anything to not let the members down.

Also, I kept myself as honest as possible to all the members who supported me. At first, I wanted to appear to be a good leader so I made a futile attempt to do everything by myself and take all the responsibilities, but soon I realized that I had to be honest and tell everybody that I simply could not do this alone--obviously because I was forgetting a lot of important things. Therefore, I confessed that I could not do this alone, and that I wanted to share the burden with them. I think this honesty led to creating trust among the members, and helped us to create the sense of unity--that 'I' was not the only one who was aiming to achieve the goal, but we all were.

Therefore, considering what led us to succeed, I think it was the enthusiasm, the feeling of responsibility, and the honesty that made us able to develop trust among one another. The club would have not existed if one of the members were lacking, as every single member of the club had strong responsibility and enthusiasm toward establishing our own club.