Over the years, I have learned about many things and have experienced more. There is often a constrained view on the term openness. On Dictionary.com the definition of openness is: having no means of closing or barring. I think one of the biggest things for me is the ability for me to express what I believe in openly. Lynchburg College prides itself in its value of openness and for there to be acceptance in what people give when they are open. More often than not, though, students are afraid for people to be open. One of the issues that there seems to be going around is that if students try to be open, they would be shunned or would get in trouble. This is an issue when people feel that they have a bias against them, or they feel like they cannot say or be who they want to be. It happens everywhere, and the future of what this non openness and acceptance can become is scary to me.

But what are some ways that we can help work on acceptance and openness? One way is to work on destroying the stigma that being who you are in society is not correct. For me, one thing is that I curse a lot, and why I curse is because of the many issues that I have dealt with in my life. I have learned that being such an open person is liberating and empowering. People don’t like being given the truth or hearing the truth. This is because there is such a heavy stigma that we should not tell people the truth or we should spare them that truth. The issue is that, by sparing people the truth, there is often a lack of respect for the person that had the truth spared from them. Why? Because people are fearful of retaliation or that someone will not take it well. I am not fake, I will not be fake, and I will work on making sure that I am myself and no one will tell me otherwise.