Diversity: Robbery and Step Father Essay

Submitted By laurosee
Words: 580
Pages: 3

"Out of Diversity: We Speak" The event I attended during diversity week was called “ out of diversity: we speak”. I learned a lot after hearing all of the guest speakers share their stories. There were seven speakers and each had a different story regarding their race, g ender, or something else that made them different in some way and how it affected them. I really enjoyed this event because it was very interesting.
My favorite story was about a young girls childhood growing up with a step father who was very violent. She was part of an armed robbery at the age of 9 and she had no idea what was even going on. She was in the car while her step father went into the store with a gun, little did she know, and he put the gun against the workers head and took all of the money from the cash register, than exiting the store and driving off in the car. Her story was overwhelming at first, and I cannot imagine dealing with what she went through. Having a stepfather involved in all of that violence, and not being able to do anything about it must be very difficult. Not only was her story very powerful and meaningful, the way she told it made it even better. She was very enthusiastic, and she didn’t read it off a paper as if it were a speech, she made eye contact and told us it through her own words. It was almost has if I could envision the scene of the robbery in my head.
Another interesting story was the one with the woman who was a student and had a child. Living her life must be extremely hard; I can’t even imagine all the work she must have to do every day. Having to worry about school, a child, working to maintain everything seems nearly impossible. You have to be an extremely strong person to handle all of that, and the negative hardships that come out of it. However, at the end of the day, I’m sure the positive moments, she has with her child outweighed the entire negative.
My personal reaction to these stories was different for each story I