We could learn a lot from college freshmen.
There’s been a lot in the news lately about racial tensions in the United States. Every time I turn on the news, there’s some headline about race. There’s constant debate on all of the talk shows about all of the violence that transpired in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The same questions have been asked and argued over and over. Who was more at fault? What did the President say? What should he have said? What will authorities do?
I barely looked at Facebook last week because I was so tired of hearing about it. Hate is ugly. I don’t care what your skin color is and I’ve heard enough about it.
It seems that dark forces are working over time these days to keep our country in turmoil. Make no mistake, hate comes from one source and that source is not God.
As I was pondering all of the ugliness in the headlines, my daughter, who I just dropped off at college, sent me a picture of her and two of her classmates. All freshmen are required to take a First Year Experience class, (FYE).
On this particular day, the wise teacher of her class, broke all of these strangers up into random small groups of three or four and sent them out on a scavenger hunt.
There are few ways to build teamwork more quickly than an scavenger hunt. You simply have to communicate and work together in order to complete your task. There’s just no way around it.
The scavenger hunt eventually led them to the Office of Admissions where a man working there decided to take their picture and post it on Instagram. And why wouldn’t he? There were three freshmen taking a required course and clearly having a ball.
Oh, yeah, did I mention that her group was her and two boys? One of the boys was black and one was white. Guess what? No one cared. They all worked together and got their task completed and had fun doing it.
The entire ordeal was such a stark comparison to the headlines that it really stuck with me. These eighteen year old, college freshmen weren’t debating race or monuments or anything else. They simply joined together and completed their assignment.
It’s not a huge news story to say the least. You won’t hear about it on Facebook or Twitter. Yet, it seemed to me to be a small story that needed to be told, a lesson for all of us.
Perhaps if we all shared more of the small stories of people working together, the bigger ones with the opposite results would never happen in the first place. It could be worth a try.
Have an awesome day!
Wendy 🙂