When I found out that I was going to become a member of the McLean County Diversity Project, I was thrilled. When I found out that we were going to take a super cool trip in the summer, I was even more thrilled, and when I found out we were going camping in the Ozarks for a whole week, I was more excited than I ever was before.

I didn’t really know what to expect or what I was going to do being a part of the Project. The only thing that I knew we were going to do was the trip, and that the year’s focus would be studying different religions.

As the year continued, I found out that there were so many more religions then I had thought before. In the past, I just really only thought about some of the main religions. I didn’t think in a million years that there were so many!

I was very excited to learn about religions that were new to me, because religion is a very big part of my life and I was interested to understand the importance of religion in the lives of others, or if it was important at all.

When we got to the Ozarks I started to think more about what we might learn. But of course we got busy with canoeing and swimming and camping - and eating lots of great food.

In the end, I can say I learned everyone has differences. I know we had been learning about that for the whole year, but being with all the people in the group for one whole week made it really sink in. I experienced it, first hand.

I also learned we can put those differences aside and just be one big group, or one big family. When with people in the Project, we don’t think about who is younger or older, who is short or tall, we just act as one, all helping each other.

For example, during debates that were organized as part of the trip, when someone would say something, another person on the team would be right there to back up that person’s statement. In those debates you had to set your differences aside and help out your teammates even if you didn’t agree with what they were saying.

Those three debates were the first real debates I’d participated in. As part of that experience, I learned that in debates, people must take an assigned side. The trip’s debates showed me if you have something to say, it is OK if you just stand up and talk about your issue.

When I graduate from high school and I move on from the Project, I will take these skills, especially how to be confident, and use them to help me in life when I go on and do other things like get a job.

Most of all, what I realized on that trip to the Ozarks was that I had learned new things this year, that I didn’t realize I had learned. I know this because when we were having debates and someone would say something, a lot of times that would make a thought pop into my head from something I had picked-up from one of the interactions that we had over the past year.

Like when we were on the topic of Atheism last September, our first interaction, I learned a lot of information that I didn’t know before from Barb who told us about being an atheist.

First I learned what the word Atheism meant, and then I learned a lot about people who consider themselves to be atheists. During our third debate in Missouri, I was on the side that argued religion does not have a positive impact on your life. I thought about some of the things Barb said - like that just because she doesn’t believe in a higher being, doesn’t mean she has a terrible life, or an unhappy family.

So when we were doing the third debate, I thought of some of those points, and brought them up. They just popped into my brain because they were already there. That showed me that I learned so much more than I had realized.

The funny thing was that I didn’t know that I knew a lot of about diversity. But really, I learned a lot over the year. I guess it just didn’t register in my brain at the time of the interactions.

When thinking about whether I wanted to return for a second year, the things I have written about were the things that were on my mind.

Being a part of the McLean County Diversity Project is amazing.

I am going to stay in the Project as long as I can!