OWNing the Experience: Ariana Santos Enriquez, OWN Student

By OWN Student Ariana Santos Enriquez, Global Leadership Program

Why OWN

I signed up for OneWorld Now! to learn Russian because I think it is an exciting language to learn. I also think Russian culture is beautiful and find the history of Russia interesting. I believe it is essential to learn about other cultures and I like learning new things. This program would be an excellent opportunity for me to try something new.

Leadership at OWN

My personal leadership goals for the upcoming year are to be involved with my community and grow in public speaking, which I hope to learn at the leadership sessions.

At the leadership session on December 1st, we learned about how to be better speakers and learned tricks to help us out with projecting a louder and clearer voice. We did an exercise where we spoke in front of our pod groups about topics we were “experts” on for five minutes, and once everyone in the group spoke, we separated into other groups to listen to other speakers. We continued this, and the groups got bigger, which meant a larger audience for the speaker, which helped us practice our speaking skills.

Why I liked it

As a shy person, I found this activity helpful. I will admit, I was nervous, but my friends from my language class and new ones I met were very encouraging, smiling and giving me a reassuring look on their faces. We were also put into our pod groups and got to know each other and even created a pod name which was fun. The pod leaders were nice and helped us out during the activities. We also did an activity where we got to show our pod members a little bit about our life and our background. Many people drew pictures of their families and flags, while others wrote a poem.

Future Leadership Sessions

I learned a lot about my pod members and their lives which was a good way to get to know each other and learn about different backgrounds. I met a lot of new people and learned new skills and look forward to upcoming leadership sessions!

About Ariana Santos Enriquez: Ariana Santos Enriquez is a sophomore at Ballard high school and is currently taking Russia Level 1 with OWN.