I'm All About Different

To me, diversity means variety or difference. It always has been. Being a Filipino living in Tennessee, then South Carolina has always made me stand out. I was always the different one. I still am for the most part, but I accepted the fact that I would always be different a long time ago.

I learned that with diversity, stereotypes are formed, whether we consciously think about it or not. Humans are programmed to automatically sort and categorize everything and everyone we see, so we do not always recognize that we do this. I know I do this, but I try to not let that hinder my judgment or actions towards others, because I know how it is to be stereotyped against more so than others.

The diversity activities done in class really brought into awareness how alike, and at the same time, how different we all are. Sometimes, we all share some of the same opinions and experiences, and sometimes we do not. Just seeing how much we have in common, even though we are all very different from each other in more ways than one, brings me to think how each student can relate to each other across the entire campus. If just our small class can have so much in common, would it be the same for other students as well?

Doing service work at Hand Middle School, I am surrounded by diversity. My mentee is a completely different race than I am, but we still have a lot in common, and not so much at the same time. It was interesting to meet for the first time and get to know each other and see the diverse environment that we were both surrounded by. For me, it was like time traveling back to my middle school years, and it was somewhat familiar and comforting. To have that familiarity was calming and erased any tensions and doubts about diversity.