Welcome to my E-Portfolio! Over the past 2 years I have been working hard as an FIU student to expand my global perspective and intergrate it into my everyday perceptions of the world around me. I have been incredibly lucky enough to be involved with over 10 different organization on campus, and hold an incredible amount of leadership roles. As I am set to graduate within the next few weeks, everything that I have accomplished and have been working towards is now wrapping up and I couldn't be more excited. I wanted to make this introduction a reflection, because this is the most important part of my experience, and how else can an outsider look at my page and look at all the wonderful things I have gotten to experience without knowing how important each and every little moment has been to me.
When I first came to FIU, my knowledge of the world around me was small. As a World's Ahead International university, I fully expected to be immersed in cultures I had never experienced before, and I was right. My first year here, my sophomore year (I transferred from a smaller university in FL), I became an RA and it became apparent that I quickly learned my resident's names and tidbits about them and I quickly started learning more about Caribbean cultures, and Hispanic traditions. I started learning about specific issues in the community and about athletes here countries away from home. My small world view was starting to expand. As my thirst for global culture grew, I interviewed for the Global Living Learning Community which was the best thing I have done at FIU. I was granted the opportunity to live in a community themed around expanding perspectives of the world around me and gain a family at the same time. That year I presented at the Student Leadership Summit on global leadership, educating other students on the concepts that were now apart of me. It was no longer part of me to be AWARE of international issues it was now crucial to me that I UNDERSTOOD why things were happening, and how each individual impacted may think. I was engaged in the community around me. I did not want to leave my community so I came back as a mentor, now with an entirely new group of students ready to take the same journey myself and the other three mentors took the year before. Again I had the opportunity to engage my fellow students by presenting on culture's impact on mental health at the Student Leadership Summit, a presentation that educated me on perspectives I had yet to experience. I also had the extraordinary opportunity to see my mentees start debates and discussions wherever they went about civic engagement, the importance of being involved with things that impacted them. The 2016 election was a hot button topic that inspired most final projects in the community and all of them included self-awareness and development as well as personal behavior. Discussion topics delved deep into what it meant to be politically active and engaged in international affairs.
As a result of my involvement I changed my future goals. Rather than become a counselor with a pretty little Doctor of Psychology on my degree frame, I decided to pursue a dual-degree in law and social work. Social work will help me continue to engage culturally and politically with my given communities within a frame of compassion and leadership, but my law degree will help me pursue international human rights. I will have the tools to be able to be engaged at every level possible. As for future professional development, I have no idea at this current moment in time where I will go but I refuse to be separated from the notion of global leadership.
