Christina VarvisDear Peter Lougheed Leadership College Admissions Committee,
Pioneering has always been an important part of my family. My great-great-grandfather was a pioneer in advancing major legislation which offered vast expanses of land to homesteaders in Canada. My great-aunt is considered by some historians as the sixth member of Nellie McClung’s Famous Five, a group of women that worked to pass pioneering legislation to deem women “persons” and to promote pioneering initiatives like eugenics, which led to the Sexual Sterilization Act of 1928. Later, my father was a pioneer in engineering oil sands extraction and refinement technology, which allowed my family to accumulate significant wealth.
I would like to be a member of the pioneer class of the Peter Lougheed Leadership College, because I strive to continue their legacy of leadership.
I believe I am a strong candidate for the Leadership College because of the leadership I show in charity work at the University of Alberta and abroad. I established a student club, of which I served as the President, Vice President, Executive Treasurer and Chair of Marketing, in order to raise funds for an extremely rare disease called polygraphous nervosa. Polygraphous nervosa causes in sufferers constant symptoms of lying, such as excessive sweating, increased heart-rate and blood pressure, as well as severe shifty eyes. With fundraising and a little help from my family, I was able to raise $200 million dollars for research and to aid people afflicted by this disease.
With some of that extra money, I decided to fight for gay rights in Africa. I partnered with Nike and financed a factory in Pakistan with the intent of making 500,000 rainbow-coloured shirts, which I then donated to Africa. The shirts represent how all colours can co-exist equally and apolitically, all in a comfortable 50/50 cotton/polyester blend.
I have also done some work around campus to help the environment. The ubiquitous paper usage at the U of A is unnecessary and wasteful. For the past few months, I have been strongly advocating for the University of Alberta to be a leader in sustainability, specifically through enacting a campus-wide paper ban. I’ve been hard at work experimenting with alternative, renewable materials on which to write, such as on fog on a bus window or in snow. Snow writing is an especially attractive option, because it also encourages exercise and a healthy lifestyle. I’m also working with members in the Faculty of Science to develop writing with organically watered blades of grass attached together with organically harvested sap.
It has also recently come to my attention that politically incorrect posters are littered throughout campus. This is not OK. Many students feel offended by these posters and these posters put some students in potentially dangerous emotional situations. Leaders should prevent people from feeling offended. One particularly offensive group made a poster with the message: “Women Regret Abortions.” In order to prevent offence, the poster’s wording should be changed to “People who define their gender as non-male, not necessarily non-male, potentially somewhat non-male, non-binary neutral, potentially somewhat fe(male), not necessarily fe(male), non-mutually exclusive (fe)(male), female (no offence intended)(pro or against matriarchy notwithstanding) unfortunately (no offence intended) express sorrow or disappointment about the medical procedure involving the removal or initiation of the non-existence of womb-enveloped cell bundles (a procedure formerly known as a——-) (no offence intended).” For brevity’s sake, the group can now safely write, without offending anyone, “PWDTGANMNNNMPSNMBetc*.”
For these efforts, I am proud to announce that I have been the first recipient of the Justin Trudeau Award for showing excellence in keeping my actions and behaviours distinctly separate from the beliefs I espouse, which I think are important qualities of any true leader.
Thank you for this opportunity. I look forward to hearing your response.
