Diversity and Me

Having now spent a week here on my new college campus, I am settling in quite nicely to my surroundings. Don't get me wrong, I have had to make major life adjustments and find new ways to do simple tasks I took for granite back home. But that is not what this post is about, this is about me and my experience settling into my life surrounded by all different types of people!

I never realized how little I knew about the world until my university brought the world to my fingertips, and I simply knew not what to do with it...

Being a major state university really opens up a diversity door I think a lot of small colleges and private institutions don't have. Over the past week I have encountered at least one person from 14 other states, 2 countries, and someone from every sexual orientation there is to be accounted for. I have met varsity athletes, inner-city kids who beat all odds and statistics thrown at them about furthering their education, I have met muslims, catholics, mormons, christian, and Buddhists. Every race humanly possible is accounted for and surrounded by this fruit salad of people, is little old "plain-jain" suburban as can be, me. I enjoy the change of pace very much.

Before I came here I considered myself to be worldly. As it turns out I was worldly compared to my narrow perception given to me by my very un-diverse community back home. Being here and talking to all these new people made me realize how little I know about music, other people's religion, and how rural communities differ from major cities. I feel like a horse that has just had it's blinders lifted from its eyes!

I'm not saying I'm about to engage in activities with all these different groups, because classes are about to start and one would simply not have time to become a varsity athlete who does greek row volunteer work while practicing buddhism and christianity with inner city kids on the way to an LGBTQ rally on the quad! HaHaHa, that would be something wouldn't it!? I am saying though, that I am in awe of the opportunity to be around all these different people, and hopefully I will become a better, smarter, and more enriched human being by understanding where each diverse person that is different from me. I struggle to understand how all these different and diverse people can co-exsist under one university and then manage to (sometimes on an extreme level) hate one another in the "real world." I try to grow from the fact that all these religions and stereotypes and races can co-exsist under one university.

Going into the first day of class I will walk in confident in my ability to learn and humbled by the vast amount of cultural knowledge I know my fellow peers and professors have to offer that I have yet to grasp.