My Lumberjack Journey: Create YourSelf Identity Conference- Day 2

Day 2 of this conference was a day to remember! I learned so many things about myself and life in general that will definitely help me in my future as long as I apply them. Throughout the day, we went through presentations as a whole then discussions with our group from Day 1 on more serious topics. Some of the activities included doing and sharing our Social Identity Wheel. This helped us to learn about ourselves and to be able to share how these different things on the wheel affect us in our everyday life. Next, we did a privilege walk. This helped us to see that everyone goes through different experiences and some of us are more privileged in life than others. Dr. Cullen taught us that no matter how far or close you were to being privileged we could all get there. She compared this to baseball by using herself as an example. She grew up in a pretty well environment so she started life on third base where others of us had to start off on base one or even as batters. We are all batting for home runs but it takes more from some of us to get their than others, because of our privilege which we have NO control over. Some people are on bases waiting for others to hit the ball to move them along but when it all comes down to the end we are all batting for the same home run, so we need to help each other reach home base. In order to do that, we, as a society, must remember to treat everyone not equally but equitably. People need to be set up to succeed not treated the same because we are not all given the same privileges in life. Dr. Cullen used an example of having a race with million dollar prizes at the end. Everyone would be treated the same so everyone would wear a size 6.5 shoe. She showed us that even the best runners would not win because we were all given the same size shoe when we all wear different sizes. This was a great analogy to show us that you cannot treat everyone the same because we are not all the same. Instead, we need to set everyone up to succeed. Another activity, included characters (Color Blind, Mr. Fix It, Gag Man, Invisible and Quiz Quiz: The African American Woman) that showed us what a diversity conversation usually looks like. We went through the pros and cons of each character and learned what character we most relate to and how we can improve ourselves. Our last presentation was on 10 ways to be a leader. The most important thing I took away from that presentation was raising the B.A.R. We need to learn to Breathe...Acknowledge...Respond when approaching a difficult situation instead of Reacting...Attacking....Breathing. This will help me so much, and the way she broke it down will definitely make it easier to apply in my everyday life. That only includes some of the great things I took away from this conference, so I'm sure you can see how phenomenal this experience was. If everyone in the world could hear Dr. Maura Cullen speak they should. Finally, I forgot to mention her AWESOME magic tricks. My mind was blown the entire weekend with them! Dr. Cullen is someone I will never forget and her lessons are ones that I will try my hardest to apply in my life for the rest of my life starting now!