Above is my critical incident journal. I wrote critical incident entries from my FYEX-honors course. The critical incident entries include different activities that I had done in the community or in school to help boost all of my competencies. I had three critical incident entries which include the following: having a speaker on the research department at MSU for my research competency, volunteering at the Mayo Clinic for my leadership competency, and going to an honors event for my global citizenship competency. Concentrating on just my global citizenship competency throughout my time here at MSU, I have learned so much about other cultures. This fulfills Self-Awareness level 1 and 2. Self-Awareness level 1: “Demonstrates emerging realization of oneself as a member of a culture” and level 2: “Shows emerging awareness of the varied contexts and boundaries of one’s own culture and its cultural rules and biases.” I came from a small town here in Minnesota and my school/community was not rich in diversity, so I never was really exposed to many people that were culturally different in the sense of coming from religious or ethnically different cultures (besides myself). As one of the few African American students in my school, you could say that I was very culturally different from many of my peers, but it seemed as though a majority of my school were very similar culturally. When I arrived to MSU it was a culture shock, but in the best way. It gave me the opportunity to explore my own cultures more including my African American culture (Self-Awareness, level 1). I have had the opportunity to meet people from very different cultural backgrounds. For example, my roommate for my freshman year was very different from me because she was raised in a community where there was a ton of diversity and she had experienced all of that, but I hadn’t. My sophomore year I lived with an international student which taught me a lot about different cultures from different countries. She had many different cultural differences including the food she ate which was very interesting to me. I have learned that I am apart of many different cultural communities including the Catholic community, African American community etc. As a Catholic, a norm for me was going to confession, but many of my friends growing up were Lutheran, so this is something they did not experience. This was a boundary between my understanding of other cultures/religions because growing up as a Catholic, I was taught that confession was the only way to cleanse yourself of sins. My Lutheran friends would just pray to God and go to church and in their religion, this was enough to be forgiven for their sins. It was hard for me to understand how that was enough because from my understanding, the sacrament of confession was necessary (Self-Awareness, level 2). In the future, I hope to continue to learn more about my own cultures and others.