On the left is Emma Tannenbaum, the other Student Council Officer for our district. In the middle is the graduating district officer, Claire Nefzger, and I am on the right. I’m excited for Mrs. Miller and I to start working with Emma this summer in preparation for the next student council conference.

My teachers encouraged me to join the student council in middle school. Back then, I never saw myself becoming the first student at ADM to be a Student Council District Officer.

I was inspired to get my position at the Student Council State Conference earlier this year. I thought the Student Council President was cool, and I wanted to be that cool. Unfortunately, to become a student council president, I would’ve had to start when I was a freshman. Not all hope was lost, however, even though I couldn’t be student council president, I could be a student council district officer. So when Mrs.Miller sent out an Email asking if anyone was interested, I responded and we started the application process.

My application had to include an essay about what I wanted to accomplish in IASC, a recommendation from the sponsor (Mrs.Miller), and a teacher recommendation. After my application was approved and selected out of hundreds of others, I had a phone call interview with the current state officers and advisors. Then, out of all the interviews, they had to choose who would be a district officer. And I ended up getting an email that said I got my position.

Some aspects of this entire process felt intimidating. The phone call was daunting due to all the work that led me to that point. Initially, meeting everyone was nerve-wracking, but at the banquet where we welcomed new officers and said goodbye to the senior officers, we spent four hours playing games together. This experience showed everyone’s kindness and made everything feel much less intimidating.

As a district officer, I work for the Central Iowa district. I will work with the other Central District officer to start planning the next student council district conference and help plan the state student council conference. The work I will do isn’t very time-consuming because all the planning and work can be flexible around when I can have meetings, and most things work with my schedule.

I believe that as the first ADM representative, I will pave the way for more ADM student council members to take on leadership roles within IASC. Now that there is someone who has experience in this role, they will have someone to turn to for questions or assistance. I hope to inspire and impact more ADM stuco members because being in this position has been a lot of fun and has taught me a lot about leadership.