Dilemma

Held up so high on such a breakable thread
Avril Lavigne

Why are leaders held to a higher standard than everyone else? Why is something that is okay for a 'normal' person to say offensive when a 'leader' says it. I was faced with a situation today that I can't get out of my head. A student in a position of leadership said something out of line and offensive to the wife of a state representative. Someone from that person's campaign contacted me, as did another student. I offered to apologize on the student's behalf, and both people who contacted me recommended that I do so. I made the call, and the wife was understanding - talked to her for nearly half an hour. Also talked to the student in question about his actions. He offered to call and apologize, I gave him the number to call, saying it was up to him. "I don't understand why this is such a big deal. It was off the record." he yelled. "You don't get to be off the record - ever" I told him. Things I say in a bar about a candidate or an administrator quickly make their way back on campus - in my time in this job, I've learned to shut up. "I'm just a kid, what do you expect?" he asked, frustrated. "For you to not act like one," I snapped back, irritated by his frustration.
As I hung up I felt like a hypocrite. Throughout the last two years I feel that people have expected things of me I wasn't prepared to give. I grew tired of being under a microscope - of censoring myself - but I got used to it. I learned not to party, not to have bad days, to always act like I had it all together, even when I didn't. I learned to be fake, and have a hard time leaving that at the office some days. It's made me a different person, and my goal this year is to get more of the 'old Julie' back. Yet what I told this student today was that he needed to work on censoring himself - on learning to survive under the microscope and conform to what everyone else wanted him to do and say. I picked up the phone several times today to call and talk to him about it. Once I even dialed, but hung up before it rang, not knowing what I would say if he answered.
We need to learn to be more compassionate...to not expect more from our leaders than we do from ourselves, or at least allow them to be human. Despite our efforts to look and act grown up, there's a part of us that's still struggling to be a kid - that's a part of me that I hope I never lose. The world has enough grown ups.