<p>Mind checking my college application essay?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>Describe a setting in which you have collaborated or interacted with people whose experiences and/or beliefs differ from yours. Address your initial feelings, and how those feelings were or were not changed by this experience</p>
<p>The United States Air Force is probably, the best setting I could choose for a topic like this. You cannot find more people with different experiences and beliefs than yours anywhere else than in the United States Military, and also, you have to, it is required, that you interact with them and learn to accept them. </p>
<p>First of all it was a complete change for me, coming from another country, completely different social class and with a complete different belief, especially not knowing anything about the military, because I’m the first one in my family that decided to serve. </p>
<p>I can still remember perfectly my first day in basic military training, two weeks before that, I was still in Mexico, and so in a month it was a really big change of environment.
Got off the plane in San Antonio, TX and as soon as I was outside the airport the Military Training Instructors were already yelling at us, first thing to my mind is what is going on? What are they saying? Why are they screaming? And there I was, with people from different places, different belief but all of us with the same purpose, go into the USAF.</p>
<p>Since the first days till the last ones in the USAF people with different beliefs and experiences always surrounded me, especially at my last duty station, Pope AAF in North Carolina. It was a big change because Pope AAF is in an Army post, Fort Bragg, so it wasn’t only learning to collaborate with people in the USAF, it was also with people in a different military branch, which have a complete different mindset and follow different rules. </p>
<p>I have always being an extrovert person, so there for, I totally enjoy being surrounded by people, especially people that I get to know about different cultures. I love to exchange points of views and hear about how was their life growing up. I always like to learn from everybody and I have never had a closed mindset. I guess that has been one of the hardest things for me, dealing with people who have a closed mindset. Because they won’t listen, they won’t change their beliefs, even though they’re wrong in a million different views. But you learn to accept them, if they don’t want to change their beliefs, who are you to change them? That’s why we have to accept everybody the way they are. We all have of way of being and you can’t change everybody. Just like Gandhi said: “We need to be the change we want to see in the world”, and that is totally what I want to do, every experience in life has made me tougher, smarter, stronger and has taught me something. If I ever fell down it was to get up and learn from my mistakes, and if I fell down again for the same reason it was because I haven’t learned the lesson. </p>
<p>I think my initial feelings dealing with people that have a closed mindset were of frustration, but then you have to ask yourself, why is that person that way? And you don’t have to judge them; you have to learn to accept them. I think I have grown a lot in this last couple of years being by myself, in a complete different environment. Just like my mother always says: “Every change is for good”.</p>
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