This I Believe - I Believe in the Subway
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This I Believe' is a series hosted by NPR in which students can submit entries where they express one of their core beliefs. For my 'This I Believe' piece I focused on my experiences from growing up in center city, Philadelphia. Coming to Penn State surprisingly was the most cultural shock I've ever experience. I do quite well adapting to large foreign cities, but when it came to living in the country, I was hit pretty hard. In the first few weeks, I was nostalgic and melancholy thinking about how Penn State in my mind was inferior to the cities breadth of diversity. My 'This I Believe' started out by using the subway to mirror a cities dynamic diversity, chaos, and opportunity, that which I love most about the city. However, through the process of making this very piece, I realized that diversity isn't defined by a collected group of people who appear diverse, rather it is a collection of people who when communicate agree to disagree through their diverse upbringings, lifestyles, and pasts. Penn State, the campus homogenous entity is actually a campus filled with great opportunity and diversity. Read my 'This I Believe Piece' to see how my attitude about diversity and culture have changed in my first year at Penn State. Timothy Allen my favorite travel photographer said, "it can be the trap of the photographer to think that his or her best pictures were the ones that were the hardest to get." In the same one, one shouldn't have to go to great and obvious lengths to find diversity. Diversity, is always right there before us. |