Know your audience

Halfway through our summer semester, I can admit that after a slow feeling spring semester, this one flies by so quickly it scares me.
What surprised me is that I see so many differences between all of us taking this class, but yet we are so much alike. We have students fresh out of high school and parents, and they all think alike at some points.
For example, one question was about the bucket list. I did not expect that students fresh out of high school even pondered about everything they wanted to have done by the time of their passing. Between the ones who want to visit Hawaii and the ones who wanted to discover their roots through traveling,and some even want to go to space, one can notice that most of us who have been living in the Ozarks have felt the need to see what the world, and the universe has to offer. The answers differed, but the same goal remains in the vast majority of students.
One of the questions made me ponder: If someone offered you a free study abroad semester, where would you go? What would you study? One chose France and it is about the cuisine. As a Parisian, French citizen, I do happen to live the stereotype that since I am french, the only job I can get is by the stoves. I have been in America for now fourteen years and I have once had a job that was not about cooking. That is one out of over a dozen jobs! What is curious is that surveys show that Americans consider French being the most romantic language, that Paris has the most frequented art museum on the planet with the Louvre, that historically France has millenniums of history that can be lived and seen, but yet only one would go. I was fortunate enough to have visited many countries growing up, mostly in western Europe, and even though I visited magical places such as Venice, Florence and Amsterdam, I will always believe that Paris is by far the most beautiful city in the world. Since I have gone so many places, I decided not to answer to that one because most of the places I would want to go to would be for leisure, not for studying.
Also, there is that one question that brought so many answers which show how different we, the online class of English 101 are so different and left me without answering :What color is your attitude?  Explain. Until this week, my attitude was a color, so it was easy to reply to it. I felt blue. Blue because I love this color, but also blue because I miss my son every day, every night, every time Spongebob, Cars or Spiderman comes on television. Blue because I am beyond being red with anger, beyond being a white blank page after everything had happened in a flash, losing everything. This week changed my view on what my attitude should be. I will be a different color everyday because of all the sorrow, anger, fear, pain that I have meditated and learned to deal with through mental wellness with Geshe, Tibetan monk living in Fayetteville, Arkansas. I cannot pinpoint which color humbled could be, because just like his flags and gardens all over his house, all the colors are there in harmony. I can be any color, and my audience has shown to be every color.
As I stated, we together are all alike, yet different. And it is humbling to be one of many.