My name is Robyn Ortega. I’m an incoming senior at Mora High School. This is my second Year in Evolvement but my first time attending the Leadership Summit. When the opportunity arose to take part in the Summit, I immediately thought “No, this isn’t for me.” I don’t usually go out of my comfort zone a lot and the Summit would force me to abandon my wall of comfort for sure. Although I wasn’t a fan of the idea at first, I slowly realized that not attending would be a big mistake. 

I was right. The experience is one of a kind. I’ve participated in activities I wouldn’t dare do back home. One of my favorite challenges involved going around the mall and asking others to take an opinion survey for No Minor Sale. Going into it I was so nervous. In fact, I started shaking and stuttering when asking the first person. Luckily, a teammate came in for the rescue. The more people we asked, the easier it got. And hey, my team even won the challenge by collecting the most surveys. Although it sure was fun to win, the greatest prize was realizing it wasn’t all that scary to talk to people. 

We’ve done a lot of other fun activities too. Yesterday, we did public speaking stations. We got the chance to get more comfortable talking to one another in a professional environment and make friends at the same time. It was cool because it was so much fun that I didn’t even realize I was learning so many new skills. I will definitely be using the skills and tips I learned in my next public speaking event. The tips have even helped me be more comfortable talking with the other students at the Summit.

The best part of the entire event is that I got to learn so much. I’ve learned a lot about No Minor Sale, and 24/7, the campaigns we support through Evolvement. Everything I learned at Summit will make my efforts for Evolvement this year more driven then the previous year. I’m excited to take what I’ve learned about the program and share it with my school.