Annie Zhao Growing Myself to Grow My Community The word “mission” is a big and vague word. On the one hand, I have a personal mission, a duty to myself out of my own goals I set for the person I want to be. On the other hand, I have a duty to my peers and my community to act selflessly and push for a better world. There are things I want to accomplish professionally while I’m here, and there are ways I hope to grow as a person as well. On a personal level, I realized last semester that I’ve been trying to rush through life and getting upset by the day-to-day annoyances. “It’s only by stepping farther back and standing still that we can begin to see what that canvas (which is our life) really means, and to take in the larger picture.” (Why we need to slow down our lives by Pico Iyer – Moreau FYE Week 1) I need to start thinking long-term, rather than getting crazy about tiny, short-term events and their consequences. I need to stop looking at the different parts of my life as separate entities and realize that they are all interconnected and come together as one, my life. I plan on taking more study breaks to spend more time with my friends. I’m going to try to pick up some smarter homework habits so that working on my academics does not occupy too much of my time, for I will die one day, and I want to live every day to the fullest. “We try to suppress the thought of death, or escape it, or run away from it because we think that’s where we’ll find happiness,” she stated. “But it’s actually in facing the darkest realities of life that we find light in them.” (Meet the Nun Who Wants You to Remember That You Will Die by Ruth Graham – Moreau FYE Week 3) When I think about my life, I often dream about the future, what my life will look like, the experiences I hope to someday have. For me, this battle between living in the moment and living for the future has always shaped my decisions. On the one hand, I know that tomorrow is not promised, and I surely do not want to spend my last few hours doing homework. On the other hand, I know that my chances of dying tomorrow are slim, and my future self will regret not working hard in college if I do not do my homework. In college specifically, I find that a work- life balance is especially key. If one outbalances the other, I find that sometimes both crumble together, or the achievements of one do not outweigh the regret of the other. My personal mission in college is to push myself to be better, but also take a step back to live in the moment. I am on a quest to find myself more. This is the first time I’m living alone, and I think that this is the best opportunity to not only find who I am but also shape myself into who I want to be. But it’s hard to do that when there’s so much going on at once. “In other words, we can spend endless amounts of time in self-reflection but emerge with no more self-insight than when we started. ("The Right Way to Be Introspective" by Tasha Eurich – Moreau FYE Week 6) I often find myself in a dilemma of analyzing my every move or just moving through the motions. Part of me feels like if I do not analyze myself, I will not know myself very well, and every day will turn into a blur, and my actions are meaningless. On the other hand, if I do not analyze, I can just feel what I feel without turning that feeling into anything more than it is. I think that a life worth lived is a combination of the what’s and the why’s. I do not want to live in ignorance of my actions, but I also do not want to overthink everything and get anxious. My mission for myself is to find the balance. “You have to know yourself first - your values, interests, personality, and skills (VIPS) - before you can make effective career choices.” (Navigating Your Career Journey – Moreau FYE Week 4) I chose my major because I have always been good at math. But growing up in an immigrant family, I also know I chose computer science because there would be job stability, https://ideas.ted.com/why-we-need-a-secular-sabbath/ https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/us/memento-mori-nun.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/us/memento-mori-nun.html https://ideas.ted.com/the-right-way-to-be-introspective-yes-theres-a-wrong-way/ https://undergradcareers.nd.edu/navigating-your-career-journey---moreau/ and I could make a decent salary. I also feel like coding is one of those skills that are applicable anywhere, so even if I do miraculously find my passions, I can always find a job dealing with that passion because of the skills I have learned. And with this skill, I can truly work for anything I value. So my mission is not to find what major I should be, but to find what I truly value and want to fight for. Before I came to college, I had a great support system of friends, families, and teachers, so having to leave them was extremely difficult. But I knew that I could build a new support system here. “Instead, we are partners, walking together, towards a better future.” (Teaching Accompaniment by Steve Reifenberg – Moreau FYE Week 9) There is inevitably a lot of pain and suffering we go through to be alive, but my life is so much better when I have people by my side. Although I have made a couple of really good friends, I hope to make more, especially those who can relate with me, like people of similar backgrounds or interests. In my mission to be happier, I need friends around me here. On the other hand, my mission here goes far beyond just me and who I am. I am here on this Earth as a community member who has a responsibility beyond those around me. : "Let us help each other, all together, to remember that the 'other' is not a statistic, or a number” (Why the Only Future Worth Building Includes Everyone by Pope Francis – Moreau FYE Week 7). We hear so many statistics about other people, like how many people in a state are illiterate, how accessible food is to students. But because we may not be included in this statistic, we do not feel the immediate reality of it. But when you meet somebody in this category, everything feels a bit more tangible. You’re more empathetic. You remember that these percentages represent human beings. I think the relationships of a life well-lived obviously include your immediate circle of friends and family, but for a well-lived life, I think that I must also build relationships with strangers that I’ll never meet. My mission is to both get engaged and engage others in classes and clubs. At this school, it can be hard to accomplish some goals because of the political divide. But I remind myself that Father Hesburgh stood the challenge and fought for what he believed in. “He did a lot of things people did not think was priestly. He was entrepreneurial.” ("Hesburgh" by Jerry Barca and Christine O’Malley – Moreau FYE Week 2). Just because things do not follow what has always been done does not make them incorrect. Just like Father Hesburgh has shown, they can be simply entrepreneurial and improve the school. I think when people say that the university is changing too much, they should keep in mind what Hesburgh would have wanted. But in my quest to work for change, as it should be for anyone, I must find what I value. And that’s the hard work. “This distinction — between individual prejudice and a system of unequal institutionalized racial power — is fundamental. One cannot understand how racism functions in the U.S. today if one ignores group power relations.” (“Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism” by Dr. Robin DiAngelo – Moreau FYE Week 10) Embracing humanity to me means treating everybody like a human and understanding that we are equal. And that’s why it’s important to diversify who I surround myself with, for each person will contribute to my values and my actions. When there is a diverse crowd influencing me, I can assure that my decisions are considering many groups of people. In high school, I think I grew up in an echo chamber, and though I still hold many of the beliefs I did then, listening to people on the opposite side has definitely reshaped my perspective on policies and ideologies. “We should be intentional about the information we expose ourselves to.” (How to Avoid an Echo Chamber by Paul Blaschko – Moreau FYE Week 11) Personally, I disagree with a lot of political beliefs and https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hZbSdVImfn2hZDqMrdL96dZCNOtHuf6C-lg3sH-Rs30/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hZbSdVImfn2hZDqMrdL96dZCNOtHuf6C-lg3sH-Rs30/edit?usp=sharing https://www.ted.com/talks/his_holiness_pope_francis_why_the_only_future_worth_building_includes_everyone/transcript https://www.ted.com/talks/his_holiness_pope_francis_why_the_only_future_worth_building_includes_everyone/transcript https://notredame.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=10159379-7eca-4549-8581-ab9500c9ecd9 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bdVnfLDrJUJhd-4UtYb_kfRpcFgOoOeY7O1WT8_d3iw/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bdVnfLDrJUJhd-4UtYb_kfRpcFgOoOeY7O1WT8_d3iw/edit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaIVxQcqnLs&t=1s&ab_channel=ThinkND practices that both people here and the university call for, but I am actively trying to keep that from coming between me and others. Their ideas will either change my opinion for the better or make my passion stronger. Through speaking to other people, I realized what I stood for that maybe I didn’t even know about. “Annie always had a passion for the inequality in education and opportunities based on race and class, even if she didn’t know it at first” (Conversation with friend, February 20th, 2022, Week 5) Sometimes the unconscious values one holds are the strongest. I need to befriend people with whom I can have these important discussions because they can help me find out what I really care about. And this takes courage. “It is urgent that we recognize that human rights are under threat all around the world, including here in the United States.” ("I am George Floyd. Except, I can breathe. And I can do something." By G. Marcus Cole – Moreau FYE Week 12) The biggest act of courage one can have is to fight for what one believes in, to even have such a strong motivation that it goes against social norms. So many human rights are under threat all the time, but many of them society cannot even fully recognize. To bring these issues to light, we must have the courage to discover them in the first place. To grow in my courage to act, I think I first need to internally develop the courage to stand for what I believe in. I need to do my research, strengthen my values, and my passion for these values will override the fear of the judgement and ridicule I might face. With this courage, that is when acting is the sole choice for me. With this in mind, I plan on rejoining Diversity Council, a club I was in last semester but drifted out of. They helped build my passion through reading articles and discussing with fellow-minded students about the issues here at Notre Dame that plagued us. In addition to joining more clubs, I want to make more friends who come from different backgrounds. “Over the course of the semester, I have not necessarily changed my root beliefs, but I have developed a greater perspective on how those beliefs should take place in my life.” (Annie Zhao Week 13) When I was a kid, I was mainly friends with people of the same race as me, but once I got to high school, most of my friends were white or black. So when I came to college and befriended many Hispanic and Latinx people, there was a bit of a culture shock for me, in the best way possible. Now, I’m trying to learn Portuguese and study more about their cultures since I now know I know virtually nothing about them. In addition, I’ve had a hard time finding friends who were Asian, to my surprise, so next semester I plan on participating in Asian Allure and Seoul’d Out. I thought that in high school, I understood diversity because my friends were more diverse than before, but now I realize that there is so much more to diversity than just race. A person from Mexico has different experiences I can learn from compared to a person from Brazil. With a new drive to understand diversity in the lens of ethnicity and nationality rather than just the base line of race, especially through befriending international students, I find that I am growing in wisdom about the world outside America, not just wisdom about diversity in America. https://law.nd.edu/news-events/news/dean-g-marcus-cole-i-am-george-floyd-except-i-can-breathe-and-i-can-do-something/ https://law.nd.edu/news-events/news/dean-g-marcus-cole-i-am-george-floyd-except-i-can-breathe-and-i-can-do-something/