The ruse would be up the moment I open my mouth. I have a strange name and an unfamiliar accent and less obvious a completely different culture. I am the only international student from Zimbabwe on campus. For me, everything is new and everyone is different. My experience on campus has been sometimes frustrating but mostly fascinating. A week ago I learnt something that highlighted the hidden complexity of diversity. I was watching a movie with four friends; one is Honduran, one is British, one is Salvadorian and the other is American. My Honduran friend mentioned that both her parents were from the Middle East. We went on to have one of the most interesting conversation I have had this semester, I had thought that seeing her meant I had seen a representation of what a large population of Hondurans look like but I was very wrong. I had to revisit my schema of Honduras and adjust it. The conversation culminated in us pulling up pictures of different Hondurans dancing, eating and cooking. I got to see the real Honduras. As an upperclassman I do not get to meet as many new people as I did my freshman year. Being a Vuceptor would allow me to share my story with a group of new people and hopefully being in my company would teach them, as it would teach me, something about the world that they would have never thought of …show more content…
This is why faculty leadership is so vital.” These words by Anne Weaver Hart outline the structure that faculty bring to the college community. We might not realize it but we learn from our Professors all the time even when they are not particularly teaching the class material. One Friday I was having dinner with a group of friends and one of them went on about how we just had to take this one English class before leaving Vanderbilt because the professor Haerin Shin had changed her life. It was not Professor Shin’s class content that had moved my friend but the professor herself. As an engineering student I knew I probably would never get the chance to take that class but watching my friends face light up and hearing the joy in her voice as she talked about Professor Shin made me happy to be at Vanderbilt. I have been lucky enough to stay in Mctyeire as part of the French hall so I get to eat dinner with a faculty member four times a week. Each member of the French has to work with our faculty coordinator once a semester to come up with a topic, game or movie to use at the weekly study break for the French hall. One week I help coming up with a list of French slang words that we could all learn and try to incorporate into our speech in our quest to sound more