Reflecting back on my experiences at UMass Lowell, I believe I have satisfied the criteria for a well-rounded understanding where diversity and culture are concerned. My love of history has always from a very young age prompted me to read about and study other civilizations and cultures around the world, however my courses, teachers and assignments at the university have pushed me even further to develop those interests. Before I came to UMass to pursue a degree in history, I studied Fashion Merchandising. I chose this area of study because I was told repeatedly by many people that the only thing a history degree would be good for is bartending (Which I have definitely done my fair share of). Fashion and Business classes in no way satisfied my desire to learn new things, or discover things about the past and how people and events shaped the world we live in. Sure there may have been a few things here and there that touched on diversity, typically to emphasize that differences in business practices and ethics exist across the world, but nothing that led me to fully get a feel for other cultures or diversity.

More than anything else, my history classes have enabled me to get a better sense of and perspective on the outside world and has allowed me to both respect and admire an enormous range of people, cultures, nationalities and religions. These courses include everything from Western Civilization, U.S. Civil War and Reconstruction, History of Modern Latin America, History of the Middle East and Islamic World, Historical Methods, U.S. History since 1960, Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and more. I have been very lucky to have had fantastic professors in all of these courses that have made learning fun and have inspired me to want to know more about the subjects.

Knowledge is the undoubtedly the best tool to overcome diversity, and in finding out about others you often can examine yourself and your own culture more closely. Knowing where a certain group of people came from and how a nation or culture developed over time is the key in understanding its people in the present.

My class selections at the university reflect a wide variety of topics in not only history but in literature as well. The two subjects go hand in hand because a society’s written works are such a significant contribution to its history, therefore the two will always influence and impact one another. In English/Lit classes I have read literature from around the world including classical books of antiquity like Homer’s Odyssey, some of Ireland’s prized authors like James Joyce and Oscar Wilde, to Lowell’s own Jack Kerouac.