Diversity and Intercultural Awareness

Experience: Semester at Sea Fall 2016

I crave diversity in my life and have this need to want to understand people and their background. So I’ve grown up with a travel aspect and understanding people instead of jumping to a judgement I could easily make about them. This is thanks to my parents, specifically my mother, who is a history and special education teacher, and also an archeologist.

We traveled a great deal growing up, but only in the United States. My parents also housed a lot of lower income children growing up. This was not a foster home type of deal, it was just friends of friends who knew of children who needed a place to hang out. Our house became a hub and my friendship become extremely culturally diverse as my friends were Puerto Rican, African American, Asian etc.

This is the background to the sentence: I crave diversity in my life and have this need and want to understand people and their background. Right after high school I took a gap year and ski instructed in Jackson Hole Wyoming for the duration of the winter and then moved to Big Island Hawaii for six months where I was a pool attendant and a kayak / snorkel instructor. From here I took my first year of college at Chaminade University of Honolulu and played Women’s Soccer for the University. I unfortunately got a head injury during my first season and had to transfer to the mainland. I found out that The University of Dayton was the sister school and everything would transfer.

I learned so much about Hawaiian culture as I integrated myself into the community surrounding my school on Oahu. I was afraid that I wouldn't get the same opportunity going to UD, thankfully I was wrong. As I came to the University I mostly was focused on recovering from my head injury. However, I was presented with so many different learning opportunities that I took and made into diverse learning. For example I joined a sorority the first spring I was at UD - Kappa Delta - and I delved into the philanthropy part of it working with the girl scouts and learning about the different types of people in the Dayton area and found an extreme amount of diversity.

The biggest cultural experience I was given through UD was the opportunity to be apart of Semester at Sea. I went to 12 different countries in the mediterranean and I learned exactly what I have been craving my whole life on a deeper level - understanding other people and understanding their background. I was thrown into so many different situations that forced me to step back and learn about the person from a non-verbal standpoint before I could even open my mouth to ask questions. I also had a language barrier in so many of the countries so learning how to engage this non-verbal part of my soul was one of the biggest yet most rewarding challenges I faced. To not be able to ask questions and learn about people and their culture by seeing, smelling, touching and tasting without this aspect of judgement was so difficult. I also was swept into this idea that, even with all of the information we were given to prepare us to be totally out of our comfort zone as we entered this narnia of a different cultural world, we still had to take on this ability to self-guide.

There was never one country that I had to apply one specific skill to in order to get the most out of every day I was traveling the world, I utilized every skill I had / didn’t even know I had in every single country, every single day. Awareness became my best friend, observing was my sidekick, independence became my tool, wisdom was my goal and learning from others was my yellow brick road to the greatness I witnessed and wanted.

I have always been a person who was not very aware of their surroundings. I was a very oblivious person growing up. With this I feel the challenge of learning awareness abroad, helped me thrive coming back to the United States and specifically back to UD’s college campus. All of a sudden I was aware of people I never even realized I could learn from here, I was aware of new things on campus, I was aware of how the world was affecting every single student at UD and I was aware of me and who I was, who I became and who I wanted to be.

Because of Semester at Sea I want to be someone who leads primarily by example, I want to learn more about people and allow for them to share who they are with me because they want to knowing that I genuinely want to know who they are. Because of Semester at Sea I have learned from elders of different types of community and grown in my faith as I took so many leaps I’ve lost count. Because of Semester at Sea I now know I can help people younger than me look for guidance and do my best to help but also seek out other mentors that could also be of help to whatever their needs or wants are. Because of Semester at Sea I have gained so much confidence and intuition that I feel that I am able to take this life on and meet my goal every single day even if I don't come in human contact of, understanding people and their background. And to learn more about this world so that I will never be enslaved into not being able to learn and grow.

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Fall 2017