Growing up in a small rural community in South Dakota, I was unaware of the concept of global citizenship and its significance in helping me learn more about myself and others. The Honors Program at Minnesota State University, Mankato, prompted me to grow in this area that desperately needed improvement. I had the opportunity to be involved in several different seminars, classes, and service learning/mission trips that greatly increased my knowledge of my own and other cultures. These experiences have been some of the most valuable and life changing ones of my undergraduate career.
My global citizenship journey began in the Honors First Year Seminar course. In this class, we discussed and reflected on the meaning and purpose of being a global citizen in today’s world. This was my first real exposure to global citizenship and understanding its importance in helping me grow as an individual and student in this diverse world. I learned that I am a member of a culture and have my own values and beliefs that shape who I am and how I interact with others. Participating in the ‘Learning to See’ Seminar, a cultural awareness event sponsored by Leadership U, helped solidify my knowledge of my culture along with its rules and biases. By learning about the refugee crisis through compelling photographs, discussions, and personal reflections, I grew in awareness that the American culture is not as appealing as it may appear from the outside. My culture tends to get caught up in ourselves and complain about the little things causing us to fail to love and care for those who are most in need. This experience made me realize that all cultures, even my own, have positives and negatives that need to be considered to allow for growth and improvement as a society.
I continued to increase my awareness of my own culture through going on a medical mission trip to Belize. I served the sick and dying through the Belize Hospice & Palliative Care Foundation and worked on fixing a home to make it livable for a patient in his or her final days or weeks of life. In this experience, I was able to interact with many of the Belizean locals, including patients, doctors, volunteers, and church parishioners, and compare and contrast our different cultures. I learned the Belizean culture is much more laid back with their time and obligations and deeply value living in the moment and being present to others no matter their schedule. I believe this is an important lesson that the American culture could benefit from to better appreciate life and its many gifts. I also realized during my time in Belize that fully understanding other cultures is difficult because of our biases and beliefs that are the result of our own cultural influences. Having awareness and keeping an open mind will help break the barrier and allow for growth.
After learning about my own culture and understanding the need to continue to build relations with others who are different than myself, I became a Language Partners Tutor through the Intense Language Program offered to international students at MNSU. It was in these tutoring sessions that I helped my tutees increase their English speaking and writing skills along with familiarizing them with the American culture by sharing my own experiences and answering their questions. I was also able to learn about the different countries that my tutees were from, including Hong Kong, Kuwait, and Russia, and their unique cultures and practices. From this experience, I realized the complexity of culture and the influence on where and how we were raised can greatly contribute to one’s beliefs and ways of life. These interactions helped open my mind for other cultures and grow in my appreciation for diversity.
Language is an essential component of culture and helps form one’s identity at a young age. Through my Spanish Language Learning I learned about the Spanish language through different readings, projects, and presentations. I realized that although there are several cultural differences in verbal and nonverbal communication between languages, such as proper greetings or ways of addressing others, there are also similarities that tie all languages together. For example, all languages are used as a means of communicating and have appropriate grammar rules to make this happen efficiently. My understanding and proficiency of Spanish continued to grow during myservice learning trip to Costa Rica’s National Children’s Hospital. It was in this primarily Spanish speaking country that I had ample opportunity to practice the language in very unfamiliar situations and interact and form relationships with many different individuals, including my host family and the children in the hospital I cared for. I learned many valuable things about the beautiful Costa Rican culture through asking about and discussing more complex topics, such as religion, government, and healthcare. This experience pushed me in interacting and learning about the practices and perspectives of others and growing as a competent global citizen as a result.
These experiences have significantly helped me grow in my awareness of my own culture, knowledge and understanding of other cultures, and the ability to communicate in a second language and learn the connection between language and culture. I learned many important lessons about how to be a global citizen and its relation in being an educated student and individual in this diverse world. I will use these experiences and the knowledge I have gained to continue to learn about my own culture and interact with those of other cultures during my time in graduate school and in the healthcare profession.