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A Single Story

**Draft from 3/22/18 posting on 8/27/18 because it is something I can still look back on and enjoy and deserves a spot on the blog.**

If someone were to ask you, "Who are you?" you would probably start listing off personal traits about yourself or things you're involved in. For example, I would tell people I'm a sophomore in college, a growth group leader on my hall, I'm a twenty-year-old woman, and I'm pretty average sized. However, based on just the things I listed, there are so many things about myself one would not know. I know many other people who look and seem very similar to me but are in fact very different. We have different likes and dislikes, opinions, and personal experiences.

Currently, I am taking a class called Psychology of Women. Last night, (yes, it's a night class) we talked about how people often only see a single part of our story and assume that's all there is to us. We watched a TED talk (https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story) where a woman shared her experience with having people assume things about her because of the single-story thought about people like her. This made me begin to think about the different single stories that people assume about me because of things like me being a woman, a Christian, a college student, etc. People hear one story about a group of people and assume things to be true for all members. For example, because I am a Christian, people could assume I hate anyone who's not a Christian and wish to not associate with them. While some Christians may be like that, I am not.

We each have our own unique stories. We may decide to share it with others or keep most of it to ourselves. However, people will continue to judge others on a single story that describes them.

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