Diversity

Talk about what diversity means to you. And explain how valuing and championing diversity will help you in your career.

Diversity to me means many different things.  In the sense of my career I believe that if I make myself a more diverse person with many different skill sets as well as different experiences I will have more success in my chosen career.  If I just leave Stout with a piece of paper saying I can get A's and B's in a classroom setting that doesn't really set me apart from anyone else.  If I can get myself involved with different experiences and opportunities to learn new skills I will be a much more diverse and well rounded individual.  If I were in the shoes of an employer and two new UW-Stout graduates came to me looking for a job, and one student had a 4.0 with no experience and another had a 3.5 and a ton of work or research experience.  I think I would feel much more comfortable hiring the one with a worse GPA, but a greater amount of work experience. 

More importantly I think that diversifying myself with different people in the world will help me in my career.  Many people think of this as studying abroad to diversify themselves with different parts and people in the world.  I don't really agree with that really diversifying someone with the people in the World.  If you study abroad in England you are basically diversifying yourself with an American who has an accent who happens to live across an ocean and is surrounded by old churches.  A person can get a much better experience with diversity by talking to a single mother in Menomonie who barely has enough money to feed her children or heat there home.  I have lived for short periods of time throughout many parts of the United States, which may have slightly diversified me.  I have been to Ireland, Amsterdam, and Germany.  I didn't meet many people or see many sights, but again there was not a great deal of learning experience by being in these places.  I've also worked side by side with Iraqi civilians for a year.  I will never again learn more about what the World is actually about for the rest of my life.  One of our interpreters would tell us daily how lucky we are just to live in America.  I remember him telling me one time "If you think the World is a good place, you either haven't seen the real World, or you are just suppressing the truth to make yourself feel better".  He couldn't speak perfect English, but that was basically what he was trying to tell me.  I don't think I fall into his first category, because I believe to "see" the real world you have to live it and I only saw it.  I ashamedly fall into the second category, because I suppress what I know about the World to make myself feel more comfortable.  The World is very different than it is at home, and the people are as well.  I believe I know how diverse the World is, and try to learn and strength myself through my experiences.  I accepted diversity and aspire to see people for who they are.