Walk of Privilege

While doing the walk of privilege I thought I would learn a lot about myself, but I really didn’t. Instead of learning I prefer to see it as I came to a realization about my life. And that was, that I am so very privileged, more then I had ever thought of before. “The Walk of Privilege” that I took in my Anth 280 class made me see how very lucky I am. While we as a class all started in the same spot, on the same line, we all ended up very far away from each other. Some of us ahead of the line, and some of us behind the line. While doing this exercise not once did I take a step back. I took fourteen steps forward though. Fourteen steps forward and no steps back is proving how privileged I really was. I learned that even though I thought I had it “rough” sometimes as a kid, there were so many people who had it much worse. I saw that in my class. When “The Walk of Privilege” exercise was over and I was counting my steps backwards to the starting line a lot of my class was counting their steps forward to the starting line. That means that they just had so many more struggles then I would have ever imagined having in my life. Yet, we all have been accepted and are attending University of Illinois which is a nationally ranked school, and one of the best research universities in the nation. What did I learn about my classmates from our collective Walk of Privilege? Well I learned that I had an extremely easy life compared to some people. One question that stuck out in my head after our collective walk was the one about food. “If you ever had to skip a meal or were hungry because there was not enough money to buy food when you were growing up, take one step back.” This was question twelve on our collective Walk of Privilege and when I saw a good group of my class step back a piece of my heart broke for them. This small discussion class of only 17 people grew to be a very vital and important part of my week. Even though we did not agree on every subject this group made me