Everyday Expertise

These experiences summarize the general competencies that support a revolutionary lifestyle.

Seeking justice is an exhausting, but ever-necessary duty. It is important to begin each day with motivation that I often find in a piping-hot beverage. It fills me to the point where I am daring the world to challenge me. These are experiences that make up my every day.

Strategic Thinking

“It is crucial to meet people where they are.”

I had the opportunity to serve as a docent for Shakespeare’s First Folio when it came to Kansas State University. During this time, many different individuals came to view the folio and part of my role was to offer information about the folio and Shakespeare himself. I quickly noticed that students attending for class or on a field trip were disinterested. I developed a set of facts that would pertain to their interest. Rather than pointing out the specific lines that could be seen within the folio, I explained to them how part of the job of the printer at the time was to urinate on the press to clean it. This caught their attention and they became a little more interested in understanding the process of printing such a large document and how that was adapted for the time. I quickly learned it is important to be aware of the group that you are working with and strategically tailor to their interests.

Relationship Building

I had the opportunity to serve as the Lou Douglas Lecture Series coordinator in which my role consisted of organizing lecture visits that would provide educational opportunities to the general community. The goal of the lecture series is to extend an understanding of public policy and social justice issue. In organizing the lectures I identify different stakeholders in the community that may have interest in the speaker attending and encourage them to get involved with the visit. This allowed me to connect individuals across campus and throughout the community under the guise of social justice which in turn creates space for those involved to build relationships and move forward to have other opportunities to work together to benefit the common good.

Collaborative Decision-Making

“...it was crucial that we were all transparent about our identities and lived experiences.”

I had the opportunity to serve on a research team that was competing in an international case competition. Most of us had never worked together and were only familiar with each other because we spend time in the same building on campus. Our project was to identify a social issue and then use our different ideas to formulate a solution. This was a lengthy process due to the fact that we were all passionate about different things and our methods of understanding solutions to those issues varied based on multiple factors. In doing this work, it was crucial that we were all transparent about our identities and lived experiences so that we were able to understand where each other were coming from in order to make progress. Ultimately we were able to decide on an issue that everyone held stake in and work to formulate a solution based on each of our own interests.

Entrepreneurial Achievement

I am personally funding my college education which has at times been a financial burden, although it has never discouraged me from continuing to push forward to afford my degree. During my summers in the past I have worked two different jobs. I would nanny during the day and then work the night shift at my local movie theater. This work was exhausting to say the least, however when fall semester rolled around I knew that I would be able to cover my tuition bill and be able to attend classes that semester. I have had to be strategic in finding resources and job opportunities to make sure that I am consistently able to fund my college experience. This project is years in the making and soon my work will be rewarded when I am able to walk away with a degree.

Effective Communicator

During my collegiate experiences, there have been multiple incidents in which racial tension was incited. These discriminatory actions were not only racial, but targeted individuals based on sexuality as well as immigration status. In light of these incidences, and due to the pressure that the administration received from the students and faculty, an event was scheduled to bring the university together to address the turmoil. Following the university wide address, there were going to be workshops to have productive dialogue about making change and moving forward. I had the opportunity to facilitate on of the workshops. In this situation, it was my role to assess the group of people that were in the workshop and meet their needs. I served as a mediator between much needed conversations about community values and diversity. I had to communicate the goal of the time we were spending together as well as maintain group focus so that we were able to contribute to an effective dialogue.

Change Leader

I had the opportunity to present a workshop to a group of sorority women about understanding implicit biases. Going in I knew that this was going to prove to be a challenge, mostly because nobody is really in favor of recognizing their personal deficits and I was not only going to ask them to recognize their personal biases, but how that impacts their organization. In the Kansas State community I have noticed that there tends to be a prescription for who is involved with Greek life. It appears to be exclusive to members of minority groups and my goal was to encourage these women to consider those implications. When engaging with this work, there was a bit of push back. Mostly in the sense that they did not want to take responsibility for the fact that their organization had work to do, as any organization does. However, we provided language and created a space to work through these concerns and I hope I was able to encourage the women to surface a new perspective.

"It was more important to me that the individuals in attendance had the opportunity to interact with my vulnerability and hopefully learn something from it"

Inspiring Motivator

I was asked to speak at an event entitled Cats for Inclusion. This is a grassroots initiative to engage individuals with considering their social location and lived experiences in hopes of finding common ground to discuss social issues. During this particular Cats for Inclusion event, I was asked to share about my identity as a lesbian woman. I recognized that this put me in a vulnerable position, however it was more important to me that the individuals in attendance had the opportunity to interact with my vulnerability and hopefully learn something from it. Myself and four other individuals from various social groups spoke about our identities and then the attendees got to work together in small groups. The goal of this exercise was to identify their social groups and create a space where individuals could share their stories to find common understanding. I was glad to be a part of this work because there is a large need for social change in my community and I felt that this is a step in a positive direction.

Diversity Agent

I spend most of my time engaging in academia by critiquing articles and writings about approaches to the way that society addresses various identities and lived experiences. This information and my ability to critique benefits me in the sense that I have access to knowledge about many different experiences, however this information does not serve communities by staying in my head. It is important to me to take this knowledge and use it in my daily life. I was effectively able to do this one day while I was sitting at a coffee shop. I overheard a young woman next to me tell her friend that she had to write a paper for her Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies (GWSS) course and she was struggling because she didn’t agree with the material because “that’s not the way she was raised”. I happen to study GWSS and at first I was offended by the comments that the woman was making. She was engaging with critiques of heteronormativity and how this social structure harms queer individuals. However, I decided that I would offer to help her with her paper, rather than maintaining my silent rage. She accepted my help and we began a conversation about heteronormativity, although I used her life experiences to help her understand. The information was difficult for her to grasp because she hasn’t had a negative interaction with heteronormative social structures because she identifies as a heterosexual, white woman. After being provided with examples of ways she engages with heteronormativity, she began to form an understanding of the ways it could have a negative impact. I was able to leverage my knowledge to help someone understand a challenging concept so that they are better able to interact with social difference.