Values

I wrote this 2 years ago - much of it is still true.

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Relationships are important to me. My friends are the people I value the most. Most of them consist of people I met while at AU. I do value the community I have with my friends, and the honesty within those relationships. I don’t think I realized this until the first semester of senior year. Kelley was studying abroad, and it was hard not to have that community. We spent a lot of time together cooking and eating meals and hanging out. I think that I have taken it for granted in the past, but I definitely have came to value this more.

One of the most important ideas I value is that of education, but this is not limited only to the institutional settings of schools and universities. The broader use of the word is what I value. Education is broadly defined as, “the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life” (Dictionary.com). Very simply, I love to learn. School has always been a bright spot in my life through times when I was struggling in other areas. This is likely why I get very frustrated and angry when I am not challenged by professors to learn and reach out past the point of my current understanding. Ultimately, I feel like they are failing me and my pursuit to learn. I educate myself as well through reading literary works, scholarly journals, and researching topics that peak my interest. I spend quite a bit of my own time doing this outside of class. There is a certain amount of humility one has to have in order to truly value education. I have to be willing to say that I do not know everything, and also that I value education enough to say that I will never achieve the pinnacle of knowledge where I could give up my pursuit of learning.

I value my faith enough to not quit seeking to find a relationship with Him. If I did not value this aspect of my life, I would have tossed my faith to the wayside a long time ago. I know it’s important to have a relationship with God. One day, I hope that I’ll see why. Right now, I am just sticking with it because I know I should. I don’t really know how I would measure whether I achieve a sort of spiritual sensitivity. I don’t know if one could ever fully attain that, and I think that recognizing the success or failure in attaining a sort of spiritual awareness falls completely on the discretion of each individual. I don’t think I could rely too heavily on other people telling me how well I am doing spiritually.


I value the role I play in making a global impact. It’s something I deeply believe. I try to become educated about places where injustices occur. The effort I put forth to improve the global situation will be something that I will do through out my life. There are several issues that I involve myself in, and I have become very active in dealing with certain issues. Even if I am not directly involved in an issue, I think it’s important to become educated about those issues as well. In order to value the “global impact” concept, one must also embrace other things as well. The belief of equality is something that I believe is essential to the concept of “global impact.” I value equality, because I think everyone deserves equality in the education they receive or in the healthcare treatment they get. Once I began to see the lack of these things and the inequality it created, that is when I became passionate aiding the gaps that had been created. Valuing my role in making a global impact has also made me value compassion. Again, to truly impact the world, one must have compassion. The two go hand in hand. Being aware about the struggles people face around the globe and seeing that face to face has helped me become more compassionate.

I tend to value consistency and security as ideas around which I structure my life. I value consistency, because a large part of my life was spent in an inconsistent environment. I see myself valuing consistency in the patterns of my daily life. It’s very much the same day to day. I do certain things in a particular order. I have seen that I thrive on having at least some structure in my life. It has been beneficial in some ways these last four years to develop consistency in my life. Security follows the sort of same lines that consistency takes. I value feeling secure and safe in my surroundings. It gives me a sense of comfort. If I don’t feel secure, I get frazzled and tense. Obviously, this falls low on Maslow’s hierarchy, and it is necessary for every human being.

I seek approval from many different sources, but in each instance, what I hope to gain is different. I seek affirmation in the workplace and in school just to know I am doing things right and that I am on the right track with the work I am doing.