Skip to main content

Growth Means Acknowledging Your Mistakes Out Loud

 Rebeca Salinas is a second year social work student. She uses she/her pronouns and identifies as a gay Chicana. As a result of her love for talking and socializing, the roles she plays on campus include Ordal RA & Latinx Unidos Ambassador. 







Growth Means Acknowledging Your Mistakes Out Loud


Everyone has things they have to apologize for. However, being put in a position where you have to willingly accept responsibility for something negative can be discouraging and even embarrassing. As a prideful person myself, I tend to try and do everything right the first time in order to avoid making a mistake I would have to apologize for later. I soon came to find out this mindset ended up being a barrier, preventing my growth in my DJS journey. 


There are many things I have had to learn in order to deepen my understanding of the role systematic racism plays in our society today. I am privileged to have had resources and opportunities made accessible to me in order to be able to educate myself on this subject. Unlearning was also a very important skill I had to practice in order to continue my DJS journey. Unlearning consisted of reflecting on past interactions I had, as well as actions I carried out and having to recognize the error in them. In order to learn from my mistakes, I first had to willingly acknowledge them, which was hard knowing what I know now. I have this guilty feeling that I should’ve known better about the choices I was making at the time. It was difficult to have to revisit certain situations because I would constantly feel ashamed of the inconsiderate actions I used to carry out with such ease. This got me thinking about how I may have affected the people around me as well. 


I thought about how my friends, classmates and family members might have felt when I partook in problematic behavior. It worried me they would have this negative and problematic image of me from years ago that I spent so much time and effort trying to reconstruct. Even though I have been working hard over the past few years to dismantle my past ignorant mindsets, that still didn’t feel like enough to me. I realized even though I had personally acknowledged my mistakes and was working towards fixing them, my feelings of guilt and shame would continue to sit with me until I acknowledged them out loud. This meant reaching out to people who were witnesses to my past behaviors that also could’ve been negatively affected by them. 


My intention was not to seek out validation through the acceptance of my apologies, nor to “showcase” my growth for praise either. I did it for those around me to feel validated, though it had been very long overdue. The severity of the occurrence or whether or not people had remembered it or had been affected by it is not what mattered, what mattered was that things were finally being addressed and action was being taken to resolve the potential harm I might have caused. I’m happy I was able to sit in my discomfort long enough to be able to take the lessons I have learned and apply them to work proactively towards the process of anti-racism.


“If we’re growing, we’re always going to be out of our comfort zone.” 
- John Maxwell

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thank You DJS Leaders

Rosario Jesús Treviño Yoson is a 2nd year majoring in Economics. They identify as a mixed queer transmasculine person using he/they pronouns. He plans to use their degree to address food insecurity. You can find him in the Diversity Center, the library, or the student radio station in the Neeb building. Dear DJS Student Leaders,      It has been an honor to organize your stories this year. When I started, I was a little lost. I hadn’t attempted something like this before. What I uncovered became larger than the website. In conversations I had with each of the writers, I sought to go deeper into their motivations, why they are committed to the work they do towards anti-racism; outside of school and sometimes unpaid. It is the right thing to do, but these students stepped farther, they took initiative and leadership in their own communities, rather than waiting for direction.       I was encouraged after hearing from a few writers “this conversation help...
Post a Comment
Read more

Alumni Spotlight: Troy Andrade 2007

Troy J. H. Andrade is a 2007 graduate with a BA in Economics and Political Science, and a minor in Music.  As a student, Troy was heavily involved in The dCenter’s Rieke Leadership Program.  In fact, Troy created the Rieke Leadership Award poster that hangs in the dCenter today (right next to the bookcase, check it out!)  Troy is originally from Manoa Hawaii and still remains close to many of his friends from PLU. Troy, Jackie (Sasaki) ('07), and Noah What type of work are you doing and why is it important to you? I am currently an attorney at McCorriston Miller Mukai MacKinnon, LLP, where I specialize in complex commercial litigation, administrative law, and appeals in both state and federal courts.  Working as one of two Native Hawaiian attorneys in a prestigious and large law firm provides me with a unique opportunity to educate my colleagues on the socio-historic and political struggles of the Native Hawaiian people when dealing with issues sensitive to ...
1 comment
Read more

#WeAreOrlando

Devastated about what happened in Orlando last night. We are lucky to live in a country where we finally have equal legal rights, but the fight for acceptance and equality did not end with the Supreme Court decision last year. Homophobia continues to be a harmful and dangerous ideology that is taught - yes, taught - and passed on from one generation to the next. It is espoused by politicians in power, it is preached from the pulpit, and it's passed from parents to their children any time they tell them homosexuality is wrong, or think that depictions of gay couples in books or movies are inappropriate for children, or when they teach their kids to "love the sinner but hate the sin." This disguised insult perpetuates the idea that our families are wrong, dirty, and shameful. All for something we had no choice in and for loving someone of the same sex.
Post a Comment
Read more