Diversity & the psychology of why we are who we are

One of the blessings and curses of working for an educational institution is that we take part in professional development courses all the time. This quarter, our mandatory training session was in the area of “Diversity and Inclusion.”

Today’s session was one of the more fantastic ones that have been offered. One of the exercises we had to do was to write out on a piece of paper all of the forces that impacted our cultural development, and then list what we learned from each of these forces. The goal of the exercise was to see what areas conflicted and to learn more about how we are impacted by outside forces.

For me, though, it was a lesson in pyschology. In listing out all of the forces that have impacted me becoming who I am today, I learned a lot about myself. Certainly, my parents, my brothers & sisters, my husband, and my job all played a huge role in forming me into the person I am today. I branched out a little farther and wrote down that my education (both K – 12 and more importantly, college), my church, and my friends have impacted my values and beliefs. When things really started to get deeper, though, I was able to learn some things about myself.

Like, I think the reason I got into journalism to begin with had a lot to do with moving around so much growing up. Every new place that we moved, I was exposed to new people with new and diverse backgrounds. I tend to be a chameleon in situations where I’m dealing with the unknown, so I pick up a lot of what the people around me are doing. Moving around so much forced me to always meet new people and to find their stories. I’m a naturally curious person, and moving around added to that somewhat. Moving from Northeast to Southeast was a huge culture shock, and gave me insight into what makes people who they are. From there, my fascination in that sociological aspect pushed me towards journalism… it allowed me an excuse to ask people for their stories.

Of course, I’m not in that field anymore, but this job allows and requires me to do the same thing – find out about people, what their motivations are, what their stories are, etc.

Anyways… that’s my random tangent for the day…

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