When I was in high school I remember making list after list of what my dream college would be like. I wanted a pretty campus in the southeast with friendly students, lots of organizations to get involved in and a strong communications program. The thing I don’t remember ever putting on that list was “Become a Global Citizen,” but at Elon University, that’s exactly what’s happened.
My first semester at Elon I remember hearing the phrase often. Global citizen, global citizen, global citizen—it was everywhere. I remember learning what it means to be a global citizen when we discussed the first-year common reading called China Road. I remember tasting what it means to be a global citizen when I attended a cooking class and we cooked southern Indian cuisine and ate it off of traditional leaf plates. And I remember hearing what it means to be a global citizen when I spent time in Elon’s El Centro de Español listening to native speakers talk in beautiful Spanish.
But what I’ll remember most is the experience that brought everything full circle for me: January of my senior year I spent one month volunteering in the Dominican Republic, and I might dare to say that it changed my life.
For four weeks I interned and served at a K-12 English-immersion school called Doulos Discovery. Using the skills I’d learned at Elon I created promotional videos for the school (watch one of my videos here). I took Spanish class three times a week. I played Pictionary with my younger Dominican host-brother. I was humbled learning new words from a giggling 5-year-old who lost it when I didn’t know the Spanish word for mop. I walked to the veggie market and learned how to barter for the biggest, greenest avocados you’ve ever seen. And most of all, I met some of the most inspiring people I’ve ever encountered in my life.
This was my first trip out of the country and I had expectations that my eyes would suddenly be opened and I would realize how huge our great big world actually is. But while I was in the DR, looking over the mountain range, knowing that Haiti was just beyond the peaks, I realized that the world isn’t that big after all. One plane ride away and I could be back on the island of Hispañola, sitting on the balcony with Danielito drawing pictures of castles and dragons. And to me, that’s part of what being a global citizen means: choosing to see one another as more the same than different. Because I believe that if we think of our global neighbors as people in exotic and unreachable places, we will use the distance as an excuse to validate inaction to some of the world’s most pressing needs. It’s only when we realize how closely knit we are all that the distance stops being an excuse. To me, being a global citizen means everyone is my neighbor and the world is all our backyard.
I will always be thankful that I learned to think this way while at Elon. And I will never forget the time I spent volunteering at Doulos Discovery School serving people on the other side of the world, people who are my neighbors — my friends.
-Katy Steele ’14
Katy was a university tour guide in the Office of Admissions and is now one of our interns for the spring semester. She leaves this September to travel to Cambodia, Botswana, Turkey, Honduras and more. She will be spending 11 months in 11 countries as a part of the World Race program.
