pretending to be a leader at a leadership conference
PART ONE of my stupendous time pretending to girlboss
Otters,
Meant to send this last week, but Substack was down over the weekend and then I just simply forgot to send this out yesterday morning. Hopefully it’s worth the wait!
Damkeeping!
If you’re like me and you’ve been watching that “I’m Just Ken” performance on repeat, then you’ll love my first (annual???) Oscars stream-of-consciousness recap, which went up the literal actual morning after the show.
And there’s my little rant on LinkedIn from awhile back. Should give you some good context before you start reading the below post.
I also wanted to tell you (or really, complain) that I have three papers due this week. Count ‘em. Three. They’re all 5-10 page suckers with mandatory external research components.
But it’s not over after this week, because then I have loads of final assignments due. After that, exams. I truly picked the wrong major.
That’s on top of continuing to apply to internships (still no dice as of writing). AND prep for some exciting things with New Majority which I cannot wait to tell you about later next month.
I’d love to say I’ll continue to email you twice a week, but given my increasingly limited capacity, don’t be surprised if your inbox is a little less full over the next 1.5 months.
This’ll be a two-parter because I like to keep word counts low here and not overwhelm you. And, like you, I also love suspense.
On March 9th I attended the UofT Women’s Students Association’s “leadHERship conference”. I invited a couple friends from the downtown campus but they were all busy girlbossing (as they should!) so it was just myself and Julia goofing around all day. Julia’s a sophomore like me. She studies kinesiology, has a cute boyfriend, and seems to know what she wants from her life. Adore her.
I met Julia at UofT’s Hart House leadership retreat last June. Just went through the TYOK archive — I cannot believe I haven’t told you about that. It was the only good thing that happened last summer. Maybe that’s because it happened during that time where I wasn’t writing here much.
I’ll give you the gist of it now. Who am I if not fashionably late.
You have to apply ahead to attend and answer some application questions; I was privileged enough to be offered 1 of 30 spots. We spent the whole day at this gorgeous little farm in Terra Cotta, Ontario that Hart House owns. What a beautiful property. LOOK AT THIS VIEW:
I met so many chickens. And also friends like Julia who I still keep in touch with, who care about me and about the world. I love people like that. I’m drawn to people like that. I wish everyone was like that. Too many people here are in it for themselves, and their only personality trait is that they’re president of a club with 6.4 members. As if I care that you run UofT’s Spoon Collection Association.
But yeah, so many incredible, funny conversations. So many conversations, period. Also delicious quesadillas and s’mores. I did some colouring, too:
ANYWAYS. Little of that is relevant to this conference, which was sick because they had three genuinely interesting presentations that didn’t sound like LinkedIn posts.
There was this amazing life coach named Coach Carey who said these great things about how we can’t leave self-development to chance, about the importance of gratitude, about how we constantly have to do things that give us joy (for me, this Substack is that thing!)
Then they had this panel featuring 6 women who I think(?) went to UofT and are now super accomplished.
There was this lawyer lady complaining about how she gets too many LinkedIn connection requests.
They had a woman who does corporate stuff for *shudders* Shoppers Drug Mart.
They also had a bunch of young Rotman (UofT’s notorious business school) grads who are hosting popular podcasts and running big networking conferences for women. You know, Rotman things.
There was this theme they shared about their career journeys being nonlinear, that they didn’t have to have everything figured out to succeed. “Every overnight success is years in the making,” one of them said, which really resonated with me. And lots of other great nuggets of wisdom, but if I included them all this post would be too long.
You know it's UofT and not UTM when they have actual budgets for catering and it's not just…granola bars. For lunch we had these great veggie platters, little sandwiches, little pastries, full on BAGELS, multiple cream cheeses, salmon… They had gluten-free bagels too! I asked Julia (she's allergic to gluten) if I could eat a regular one in front of her without her dying and she said yes. Thank god.
Allison Forsyth was the keynote speaker. Intense and inspiring at the same time, she used to be an Olympian but had a coach who did some horrific stuff to her (and many other young female skiers). She's spent the last few years advocating for safer sport and working with the feds and NGOs to create stronger measures to protect women in sport. Which, absoLUTELY yes.
There was a networking session at the end but we skipped it because we were spent and took the train back. When I got off at my stop I could see my bus home driving away. Felt great!
Ok, there was one extra exciting thing involving the conference that I wanted to mention, but, like I said, we’ll save it for part two.
Which means you basically cannot unsubscribe now.
Because that would mean you wouldn’t get to hear about THE INSANELY COOL PERSON I MET.
TELL YOUR FRIENDS TO SUBSCRIBE. THEY WILL BE SOOOO GOBSMACKED.
not the Spoon Collection Association