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Ashley Hedquist

Emma Morin

Intro to Honors

22 September 2022

Intercultural Engagement Exploration Essay

Culture can be described in various phrases and words. Oftentimes, people think of

tradition, beliefs, values, and lifestyle. Depending on a person’s national origin and/or race, their

culture may look different to others. This being said, becoming engaged in different cultures can

broaden one's understanding of people and develop deeper relationships with one another. Being

involved in different cultures also allows one to better succeed in the workplace and “real

world”. Intercultural engagement is incorporated into the honors program to allow students to

become better versions of themselves by being involved in different cultures and beliefs.

The competency area of intercultural engagement encourages students to partake in

different activities to become more involved with cultures other than their own. The intercultural

engagement competency area can be broken down into three parts: self-awareness, knowledge

and understanding, and relationships and communication. This being said, each of these areas

build upon the last. Self-awareness allows someone to become more aware of themself as well as

how one belongs as a member in their own culture. To have knowledge and understanding, one

must first have self-awareness. Knowledge and understanding pertains to learning about different

cultures and understanding people who have different beliefs/cultures. As one gains knowledge

and understanding, they will be able to communicate and develop deeper relations.

Communication and relationships allows for someone to connect with different people from
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other cultures as well as gain skills to better relationships in a very diverse world. Developing

these skills matter, as it allows for people to better connect with each other as well as prevent

judgment and poor reasoning. To add, these skills will make you more susceptible to succeed in

the workplace as well as one's social life as it allows people to better understand one another and

form better relations.

In my perspective, I have had plenty of experience with intercultural engagement. My

high school and town is very diverse culturally, so I have been surrounded by many different

cultures. This has caused me to develop different skills to better connect and understand people

of a different culture than me. Specifically, my school is majority hispanic and they are very

strong on their cultural beliefs and traditions. As I went to school with my classmates, I was able

to learn why they do certain things and what is most important to me. This made me better

connect with them as well as gain a greater appreciation for my own culture. Learning about

other people's beliefs allowed me to better solidify my own. To add, my cross country running

partner was from Africa and was very strong in islamic religion beliefs. As we got closer, I was

able to ask her questions about her culture to gain a better understanding of where she comes

from and what she believes. I was able to get a deeper perspective of why they were hijabs and

do not show their legs. Before I connected with her, I always questioned why she ran with

leggings on even when it was super hot out. As I developed a deeper self-awareness, I was able

to gain knowledge and understanding of her culture. As we began to get to know eachother

better, we began to build a great relationship. Today, I am still in contact with her and she has a

very special place in my heart. Learning these things allows me to become more understanding

and more open with people which has allowed me to enter this competency area very excited to

learn about other cultures as well.

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To continue to learn in the intercultural engagement competency area, I hope to be able to

connect with people from other cultures and better understand their beliefs. I hope to be able to

attend different culture nights held on campus to get previews of people’s culture as well as

better connect and communicate with people of those cultures. To add, I think taking a foriegn

language course would be extremely beneficial in engaging in different cultures in the class as

well as outside the class. If I am able to understand a culture’s language I believe I will be able to

better understand it as well as gain communication skills for the multicultural world. As I think

about jobs, I believe knowing different languages makes you much more qualified as it allows

you to communicate with different groups of people.These experiences will further my growth in

this competency area as they allow me to develop more self awareness, knowledge and

understanding, as well as build better/deeper relationships. Therefore, I believe these are

appropriate choices to further my growth within intercultural engagement.

Overall, intercultural engagement allows us to learn more about people as a whole as well

as create more meaningful relationships. By implementing the intercultural engagement

competency, I believe the honors program is preparing students for greater success in college as

well as their future endeavors. I think it is super important to not only understand your own

culture, but understand other cultures as well. This allows people to better solidify their culture

as well as relate to other people better. Therefore, I hope I am able to find experiences for both

the application and development areas that will not only be helpful for my portfolio but my life

as a whole.