The following student report was submitted by Ambassador League Agent Luke W. during the 2009-2010 League.
Mission: SSI Experience
Through my participation in the Student Statesmanship Institute I earned a greater understanding of how to work with people. Often times, your "allies" may be the greatest enemy of reaching your identified goals. Differing viewpoints on how to accomplish the same thing can fracture an effort and delay or prevent a group from crossing the finish line.
When I served as a 'senator' at SSI my caucus had six members. Several members on the team had strong feelings about getting a majority to approve bills while others were not heavily vested into the outcome. Knowing who you were working with and gauging their commitment level was absolutely necessary to accepting others and avoiding enormous frustration.
The strategy sessions hosted the greatest conflict of the week. At one point the discussion got pretty heated. That meeting, however, was the turning point of the entire experience. After this intense debate on strategy, I developed a new respect for the person I had the conflict with, and vice versa. We went forward, forged a direction, and proceeded with a strategy.
Getting past differences seems to be one of the most important things a person can learn, in both politics and in life. At the end of the week, our bills were voted on and if memory serves correctly, we were successful. That seems to have been the point of the week, but to me it really didn't matter if we won. While the specifics of the bill and the issues surrounding it have faded as the years go by, I do remember working out differing points of view with another person.
C.S. Lewis said "friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, "What! You too? I thought I was the only one." I made a legitimate friend at SSI that summer because at the end of the week we could say to each other: "I see it your way too."
The experience of working with someone who I would not necessarily have otherwise worked with was the most valuable thing that I took from my SSI experience. We are commanded in scripture to love our neighbor as our self. This is not a call to like all men. Who in their right mind always likes themselves?
Instead, it is something far greater. It is a call to look beyond the faults of others and wish for their greater welfare relative to the measuring rod set up by the Kingdom of the Living God. Attending SSI helped me learn much more about "loving my neighbor as myself."
