Can four days really change your life? In such a short time, can you learn to be a new person, a better person? The people who put on the Maine Youth Leadership seminar every spring sure believe it is possible. They take sophomores from all around the state and bring them together to teach them the fundamentals of their motto: Leadership, Volunteerism and Character. Through both college style lectures and hands on experience, kids learn about life, helping others, and most of all, they learn about the kind of person they really want to be.

On the first day, everyone is nervous. No one knows what to expect. That is exactly what they want kids to feel like. It is not an accident that there is generally only one student from each school attending the seminar. They want the students to step outside of their comfort zones and open up to new people and new experiences. This is not the place for shyness. The afternoon is mostly meet and greet style activities, and in the evenings, the seminars start.

All of the speakers throughout the weekend are people that the students may not get to meet in their everyday lives, but hearing their stories really makes a difference. Whether it is an eighteen year old mayor, or a sixty year old judge, each person brings their own expertise to the students and encourages them to take chances and work hard because that’s the only real way to succeed.

Before each seminar or activity, the entire group does a cheer. Sound silly? It’s supposed to. On the first day everyone is hesitant and doesn’t want to look like a fool to the others in their group, by the last day the kids are disappointed because the JC’s called the Reese’s Pieces cheer and not the Chiquita Banana one. One time shy kids are now the ones up on the stage at the talent show singing and dancing and telling jokes. The people at Maine Youth League (MYL) believe in creating a safe environment for changes like these to happen. A place where kids can choose who they want to be instead of who they have to be. Most of the time, the person they want to be is the better person they always had the potential to become.

By the end of the weekend, everyone feels truly blessed to have been given this opportunity. The only next step that seems fair is for them to go out and try and change someone’s life for the better as much as their own was. The big message is “Pay It Forward” Make someone else’s life a little easier by volunteering your time. Every little bit counts.

The final night is the most bittersweet of all. This is the night that everyone says goodbye. I will never forget when someone said “The person I am going to miss most is myself.” This was one of those formerly quiet kids that now were very different. He expressed what all of our major concerns were. We knew we had to go back to our separate schools, but now that we were different people, would we fit in? The people there had one simple answer; if the real you doesn’t fit in, do you really want to?

This seminar is only four days long, but in four days everyone changes so much its shocking. They go in as nervous strangers and come out as a very tight-knit group of friends. Friends who are willing to help out and make their communities a better place, to make a change when something is wrong, and when it is needed, someone who is there just to listen to you talk about your life and the events in it. Going back to school is tough, but the experiences taught, and the network of peers, makes this a seminar that is never forgotten.