Global Citizenship, An Experience and A Mentality

I am a global citizen because I choose to be. I actively choose to go outside of my own nationality, culture, and custom to explore the greater world around me through immersion, education, and networking. When assigned the Global Citizenship/Consumption Story Map, I first struggled with the assignment. I have not had the opportunity to travel beyond the contiguous United States and was saddened to think the only way I was connected to the greater world around me was that I had an IPhone assembled in Taiwan, my coffee is from Costa Rica, and that a majority of my clothes were made in China. I felt as if I were not a global citizen, rather a partaker in unequal globalization. I enjoyed the luxuries of American products that I could only afford because laborers overseas were paid below minimum wage salaries to assemble the products. As I began researching what a global citizen was, I was elated to learn that my lack of travel was not a complete hindrance, I had engaged in the global community from my home of the United States. I have raised money for victims of both domestic and international disasters, I have researched and protested for the rights of undocumented workers, and in aspects other than global humanitarian efforts, I have just enjoyed stories, literature, and folklore from countries I can only hope to visit. I have developed a respect and appreciation for the world around me, even if I have not experienced it with my own two eyes yet. I look forward to making deeper, more personal and unique connections with the places highlighted on my map because they all hold special places in my heart, areas where I have consumed their culture, their history, and their modernization, but the consumption has been remote. I would like to become a more engaged global citizen through traveling and scholarship.