The Shoes of a Stranger by Ashley

The Shoes of a Stranger by Ashley - November 2017 Scholarship Essay

By pressing a miniscule, plastic button on a plastic remote, the television comes to life, displaying the horrors of the previous day. Another school shooter, another protest turned riot, another reason to stay home. The news tries to stay positive by reporting heartwarming stories about fundraisers and community service projects, but there is no hiding the intolerance and ignorance of society.
We fall victim to one-sided stories and choose to rally against stances before we have developed a deeper understanding of the issue at hand. We forget that everyone is human and start to hand out judgments before we have considered the full story. We have come to believe ourselves so tolerant to everyone’s culture and beliefs that we believe we know people because we can Google what their culture defines their ideals to be. We have neglected to realize that our false sense of tolerance has led us to develop an intolerance. We lay blame to whole groups of people based on only tidbits of a story, but claim we are tolerant to all people. We segregate people based on their ancestral origins and define their person based on what they should connotatively be, but claim we are unbiased towards all people. We develop prejudices based on the actions of a few, but claim we are fair to all people. We sit at home, swaddled in the security of being an opinion among thousands because that is the only solace we have: to share an opinion with someone else, to make a connection to another human being so we don’t feel so isolated from our brethren who choose to segregate themselves.
A big part of postsecondary education is expanding the mind and moving past previous dispositions that hinder our development. While professors are great mentors for expanding the intellectual mind, we can’t overcome our biases and nature to only listen to one side of the story without experiencing life. We can never fully understand a culture without leaving our comfort zones and experiencing that culture. We can never fully comprehend the motivations of a group of people without walking in their shoes for a day. We can never fully call ourselves tolerant if we have never experienced the full wrath of the prejudice and intolerance experienced by those groups we hold such bias towards.
By taking a year to go abroad and dive into these cultures, we can continue to learn and push past boundaries previously thought untouchable, while learning the lessons these cultures have to teach and expanding our social intelligence. A lecture room can’t teach someone the magnificence of a Cinco de Mayo celebration or the delicious taste of a kolache. A professor can’t convey the importance of family or the insurmountable love a mother can show. These things must be experienced for oneself. These lessons must be learnt from being exposed to these wondrous traditions. Tolerance comes from the understanding of another’s culture and the acceptance of their beliefs. Study abroad programs give students the opportunity to learn from various cultures and instill an understanding of other people no other program can provide.