Description and Diversity

You all remember those times back in elementary school were you had a week where you had to make a poster about yourself, telling about your likes and dislikes, some pictures from your life, etc. You do? Good. Then you remember the part where you also had to describe yourself in three words. Back then, our minds were so limited, the best answers you got out of anyone would be "Smart, Funny," and something about that person's stuff, like "Has Cool Toys" or "Has Pretty Hair".

Then junior high ran around. Most people were so confused and trying to find themselves they didn't know what to write on the questionnaires the teachers handed out at the beginning of the year, so often the answers would be similarly juvenile. "Smart" often found a place in the mix, but there were slightly more mature answers, like "Dedicated" or "Neat-freak", but although more descriptive, they essentially meant the same thing-kids were still searching for themselves. Sometimes you would get a very...ambitious (for lack of a better word) person here and there who would write their supposed career or some other description, like "Future Doctor" or a quality needed for a certain job, like "Hardworking" or "Really Strong".

Once we reached high school, the papers handed out by the teacher usually disappeared, and no one had to worry about the "3 Descriptions" part. Oddly enough, the students ended up doing this to each other, and even worse, they ended up reverting almost back to the elementary school level, classifying everyone by their basest attributes, like "The Jocks", "The Preps", "The Brainiacs", "Band Geeks", etc.

Anyway, now I have been thinking about that here (at college) most people don't classify each other at all, just because everyone is so different it wouldn't really make any sense. I realize now that it didn't make any sense all along...well, except maybe in elementary school when you learned how to do this...but human nature took it too far. I think we need to realize diversity is not something to be afraid of-but loved. We are all so different, there's no need to criticize each other's faults when we have so much we can learn from each other.

Stay tuned next post for when Dressman posts his self-evaluating college version of "The 3 Descriptions"!...