Undergraduate /
'Not a random mixture of ethnicities alone' - Common App essay diversity [5]
Prompt: A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community, or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you.
(I bolded the paragraph starts)
Diversity to me did not simply represent a random mixture of ethnicities alone. Just because we had people from different races in one room did not necessarily mean it was a diverse environment. I felt that a place or community is diverse when one opens their respective minds and realizes all the varying cultures that exist around them. The amalgam of cultures, traditions and heritages, the mixture of varying beliefs and ideals and the coalescing of many backgrounds into one mosaic was a true diverse environment. A diverse environment, however, is not limited to just varying cultural backgrounds, but can also have in it people who have a variety of different interests, hobbies and goals.
I am a first generation Indian American and I grew up in the town of Edison, NJ. Initially, it did not even strike me that Edison was a diverse place, the reason being I had not thought of it as such. In all honesty, I had a narrow minded view of the world and I was indifferent to the various people who were around me daily in my school. I viewed my surroundings as me in a school filled with Americans. I had friends from varying ethnic backgrounds but I never bothered to understand the deep cultures they carried with them. To me they were just typical American teenagers much like I was. This, however, changed when I began to volunteer at my school's local greenhouse. There, I met a young Japanese kid who I can now call one of my closest friends. I was asked to come back to the greenhouse at around 6 that day because they needed extra help but I couldn't that day because I had my mridangam (A South Indian drum) class. My friend asked me what I was doing and I hesitated because I didn't know how to tell him something I assumed he had never heard of. When I finally told him, he simply smiled and replied "Oh, I know that instrument. I've seen people playing that before". He also went on to tell me whatever he knew about Indian Classical Music. I was taken aback. How did he know about my culture so much when I knew nothing about his or anyone else's for that matter? As it turns out, he had an Indian friend like me who also played the instrument and it interested him to learn more about the cultural heritage of India. I then realized how I never bothered to ask him anything about his life or his interests. I began to ask him soon about what interests him and what hobbies he had. After this experience, I realized how much I had never bothered to know about my friends. Whether it be characteristics that illustrate their own personal traditions and cultural backgrounds or just simply hobbies and interests that they enjoy, my friends' lives had remained distant until then. I realized how little I knew of my closest friends except about their grades or what classes they had. I came to a final realization that in any diverse environment there is always an exchange in both directions. I realized how I was similar to everyone in that I had my own idiosyncrasies and this added to the diverse environment of my school much like anyone else's personal activities would. To a college environment, I would bring my knowledge of my Indian culture and religion, enjoyment of sports like tennis, my curiosity and inquisitiveness and above all a sense of understanding and curiosity about my fellow peers.
In order for there to be a positive atmosphere and an environment where people can enjoy, one must keep an open mind. He or she should not only embrace one's own background but also learn to understand and tolerate the multitude of backgrounds that, in today's modern world, exists in any environment. Just because we are in a melting pot society does not mean automatically mean we are worldly and tolerant; when we learn and form connections with people who have similar or different traditions, who share similar or different interests, and who share similar or different talents we become much more open minded and this gives us a fresh perspective from which we can view. Similar to how a prism combines a multitude of colors into one shining white light, our society accepts and brings together similar, somewhat different, and very different aspects of each person into a uniform system. With this understanding I began to realize what had always been echoed in the famous line: "E pluribus Unum"; unity in diversity. This would prepare me for a bright future in life.
