I’ve never had the highest IQ in the room.

But every individual always responded the best to me by far out of anyone. In my high school alone, I had 465 individualized custom handshakes that I did with different people when I saw them throughout the day. I did so to ensure that they knew I didn’t just know their names but that I deeply cared about their existence, and they affected mine as well. I did this all intuitively. I’ve yet to read a book as my life experience has been so deep that I haven’t had the time, interest, and/or need. I’ve always naturally been around persons much smarter, more emotionally intelligent, and more well-read than I will ever be, and I learned from them directly.

My leadership qualities were noticed by guidance counselors, peers, sports mates, and my high school calculus teacher. The issue was it wasn’t noticed by me at all. Despite being the head of conflict resolution in the school for three of my four high school years, volunteering at 5:30 AM every morning to help mentally challenged children, helping both the JV and varsity girls basketball teams with practice to run their plays before my varsity practice, and being in more clubs than is necessary to list at this moment, I saw myself for nothing close to what I was actually doing. People felt it and gravitated towards me because my integrity always led the way without thought. It didn’t matter what other abilities I had or…