OUR VIEW: It important for students to experience being a student leader in college.

Every student should take on the opportunity to become a student leader.

While student leadership can be perceived as intimidating and it seems better to be on the sidelines, college is a great time for us to develop our leadership skills with little risk.

Not only can we learn how to work with our peers, we gain gain time-management skills, decision-making skills, and collaboration skills that we just don’t learn in the classroom.

For example, working as a leader on the student newspaper teaches students how to fair and balanced, how to see things from multiple angles, even when they disagree. They learn how deadlines are not negotiable. They learn how to play nice with each other — all those things we learned in kindergarten. That’s true with many of the 111 student groups on campus.

It’s not easy. Trainings such as iLead and Rising Mustangs, provide a great opportunity for leadership development. Take advantage of those opportunities.

Being a student leader pushes us out of our comfort zone. And we need to take advantage of those opportunities.