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  • Kaj Johnson '22 RGLP Reflection: How can cross-cultural experiences teach us to better tolerate ambiguity, and why is this relevant in the workplace?

    November 16, 2020

    Cross-cultural experiences can teach us as students, activists, and thinkers to better tolerate ambiguity in a multitude of ways. Firstly, we become more accustomed to cultural ambiguity the more we are exposed to a wide swath of cultures, particularly ones that do not complement our own lived experiences. Through this repeated process of encountering new cultures and working through ambiguity, we can begin to understand that cultural knowledge entails a long process of patient learning and adaptation. No culture can be summed up in a sentence, much less in an entire novel.

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  • Johnathan Nicastro '23 RGLP Reflection: What aspects of globalism are most challenging to collaboration and why?

    November 16, 2020

    I believe that the hardest part of globalism is overcoming people’s innate collectivistic impulses. What I mean by this is that most people identify with a particular group of people at the exclusion of those whom they perceive to be outsiders. This collectivistic identification typically revolves around certain immutable qualities such as nationality, race, gender, religion (especially those that one is born into or is introduced to by authority figures at an early age), etc.

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  • John Cho '22 RGLP Reflection:

    November 16, 2020

    “I think that one of the most important things that I have learned at RGLP is that intercultural communication is a give and take that requires both ambiguity and adaptation. Before this program, I genuinely believed that there was one right way to interact with people, both familiar and foreign, and that one right way was my way. I had to simply struggle my way through every intercultural interaction, hoping that by pure chance that we would get along. If someone else was just as strong-headed as I was, then that would mean that problems would arise.

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  • Fiona Sleigh '23 RGLP Reflection: Navigating Intercultural Experiences and Leadership

    November 16, 2020

    Whether as students, leaders, or citizens of the world, we bring to every role or position our unique cultural backgrounds and experiences. The spaces we’ve grown up in and learned in shape how we see ourselves and those around us. We grow to feel comfortable in those spaces, and, as a result, may consciously or subconsciously come to expect that the people we interact with in other settings will share our background and understanding of social dynamics.

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