Describe a setting in which you have collaborated or interacted with people whose experiences and/or beliefs differ from yours. Address your initial feelings, and how those feelings were or were not changed by this experience.
My sophomore year I decided to study abroad. Knowing what a beneficial experience it could bring, my dad accepted my proposition and decided I would go study to Nashville, Tennessee, where I have family. I prepared for the big change this was going to be, not only would I interact with people who don't speak my native tongue, but I would also be interacting with people from different religions, and being raised in a all catholic school and also in a society where ninety percent of people I knew where catholic, It made me a little nervous but also a little curious.
School started and with it came soccer. I couldn't play varsity thanks to TSSAA rules, but enrolled on the Junior Varsity team anyway. The team was composed by eight teen players form which half were not catholic. Soccer is a big part of my life, I have been playing it since I was five and with all of this years I have learned that soccer teaches you a lot about the people you play with, I hoped this would allow me to understand my teammates and get used to them in a much faster way. I started to get to know my teammates pretty quick and we had good chemistry even though I had just met them. I realized that the cultural and religious difference wouldn't make a difference at all.
I was right, after twelve games played we had won nine of them and the season came to a close. The closeness of the team had permitted us to play the way our coach intended us to and keeping all of the differences aside helped us achieve this. Even though my feelings about playing with people whose religions I didn't share were not concrete at the beginning of the season, they quickly started to develop in a positive way, I realized that you could actually learn a lot from people like this, people who are very different from you.
Studying abroad had enabled my to take in and learn about new cultures as well as to broaden my world view by every experience my teammates and I shared, And that's why the best experience I had while studying abroad is playing with such a diversity in my soccer team, and learning new things from and about them through the experiences we shared.
My sophomore year I decided to study abroad. Knowing what a beneficial experience it could bring, my dad accepted my proposition and decided I would go study to Nashville, Tennessee, where I have family. I prepared for the big change this was going to be, not only would I interact with people who don't speak my native tongue, but I would also be interacting with people from different religions, and being raised in a all catholic school and also in a society where ninety percent of people I knew where catholic, It made me a little nervous but also a little curious.
School started and with it came soccer. I couldn't play varsity thanks to TSSAA rules, but enrolled on the Junior Varsity team anyway. The team was composed by eight teen players form which half were not catholic. Soccer is a big part of my life, I have been playing it since I was five and with all of this years I have learned that soccer teaches you a lot about the people you play with, I hoped this would allow me to understand my teammates and get used to them in a much faster way. I started to get to know my teammates pretty quick and we had good chemistry even though I had just met them. I realized that the cultural and religious difference wouldn't make a difference at all.
I was right, after twelve games played we had won nine of them and the season came to a close. The closeness of the team had permitted us to play the way our coach intended us to and keeping all of the differences aside helped us achieve this. Even though my feelings about playing with people whose religions I didn't share were not concrete at the beginning of the season, they quickly started to develop in a positive way, I realized that you could actually learn a lot from people like this, people who are very different from you.
Studying abroad had enabled my to take in and learn about new cultures as well as to broaden my world view by every experience my teammates and I shared, And that's why the best experience I had while studying abroad is playing with such a diversity in my soccer team, and learning new things from and about them through the experiences we shared.