Q: 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.
When it comes to interacting with people of different beliefs I like think I am pretty versed. Having spent a lot of time online playing games and talking to people from different parts of the world I tend to have a pretty open mind when it comes to politics and general ideals. A good example of a time when this difference in culture shocked me is when I was younger and just getting into online gaming.
When I was about thirteen our family got a PlayStation 3. PlayStation had an online service that I used to play games like call of duty with others from all over the world. I distinctly remember the first time I ran into someone from another country. It was around nine at night when I heard someone speaking in a very off-putting tongue. It wasn’t English, but it had a recognizable structure and he kept coming back to a series of sounds. Eventually I got up to asking him a question and heard him speak English. Once I heard that all too familiar accent it was clear. He was Russian.
I would end up playing with him off and on for a few years, his name was Artyom and he lived in northern Russia. Throughout our time spent playing with each other I learned a lot about how Russia’s system of communism worked and how they eventually moved away from it. Several of the points he made I would argue against and we would go back and forth on which ideal was better and what the best way to run the world would be.
Although this was my first interaction with someone from a different country it certainly wasn’t my last. It seems more and more common for me these days to play with someone who isn’t from my country rather than someone who is. Whenever someone has to operate within an environment where there are people of vastly different backgrounds, it teaches them to be more understanding as a whole, or be shunned from the group at large.