Ask me a year ago and I never - not in a million years - would have described myself as a leader.

If you would have met me in high school, you probably would have had to pull a conversation out of me. I was never the one to raise my hand voluntarily in class or even strike up a conversation with a stranger. Small talk was my worst nightmare and sitting back and listening in a group conversation was my biggest comfort.

I always labeled myself as shy and an introvert. I always preferred someone else to speak up and take charge, and I rarely thought of what I had to say as particularly important.

It sounds like I had myself all figured out but, slowly, I started to believe that maybe all of those labels I’d put on myself were not entirely true.

My sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta, emphasizes with their tagline “Leading Women” that leadership isn’t strictly just an officer position, but being a leader in your everyday life. I never would have thought of associating myself with this idea of being a “leader” before, but the women surrounding me showed me now that it wasn’t always so black and white...or, I guess, black and gold.

Being a leader became something more achievable in my eyes: taking initiative in my schoolwork, being approachable for other people, and living by my values. Just like I could build my own definition of leadership, I could build a life for myself that I was proud of - and to me, that was what got me thinking that maybe I was this thing I had never considered myself to be.

It didn’t happen overnight, but I started to feel comfortable talking to anyone and everyone around me. I became the girl to share my opinions and experiences in a discussion. I started to want to be around people much more and It wasn’t until my friends at school called me extroverted and outgoing that I realized how much I’d grown.

And that's not to say that I still don't love my time to myself, and I still don't get a little nervous speaking in front of people I don't know. I still firmly believe that still waters run deep, and sometimes silence is more powerful than words.

But that's not all that I believed, nor was that all that I was.

There isn’t one moment where I felt a flip switch and there isn’t one single influence that made me come out of my shell. It was more of a series of moments where I would build up the confidence to say or do something that I would have kept to myself previously and that momentum just kept going.

I found that I didn’t have to put myself in a box of being shy and strictly a follower. Theta taught me find the potential in myself to speak up and live with confidence. And I can thank the other leading women around me for helping me see that.