My values? Where do I begin?!

First and foremost, my faith in God is one of the most important things to me and is what guides me. A lot of my values have their foundation there. I try to live my life the way I was raised, by respecting others and being helpful to others. Second, I would say that I value family and friends. My mom has taught me that you will always have family no matter what. When you need someone for anything, family will be there. I am really close to my family and I am so blessed to be able to see them as often as I do considering that the majority live in Puerto Rico. I consider my friends my extended family. I often take for granted the individuals who know me so well and help me out with anything.

I also value laughter, personal growth, and balance. Days seem worse if you don't cut yourself some slack and laugh. You may not want to laugh at a particular instant, but as the time goes by and you move on, life will be easier if you can laugh at yourself. I am a firm believer in always being aware of who you were, who you are, and who you want to be. OSU has changed me in so many ways, and I appreciate it so much because of how I was in high school. I've slowly been watching myself grow up into a young, responsible adult, and I can see how it's building the foundation for the person I will be in the future. I truly have grown personally. I also value balance because life gets out of control sometimes and it is important to take the effort to find your happy place. I love being involved around campus but it gets difficult juggling school, friends, parents, and other responsibilities. I learned last year how vital it is for me to make time for myself, to find that balance that keeps me from going crazy.

I am my values. If you were to take away everything I cherish and believe, you would have the physical Laura, the skin and bones of her. I react the way I do and feel the way I do because of my values. My character and my values go hand in hand. I don't think I can have one without the other. When I get asked, "So tell me about yourself," I talk about my values. I guide my actions with my values... or at least I try to. Reading about congruency of values and how hard it can be makes me feel better.

When doing last week's activity, I found that a lot of my values were shared by my council. We all decided that balance, friendships, enjoyment, growth, and integrity were important to our council and those went along with my values as well. It was nice discovering that I shared the same values as my council. I think it's a good sign of what's to come. If our council can agree on what's important to all of us, then it will make it easier for us to work together and bring about change.

I think that my values are shared within my community here at OSU and outside of the university. As a Greek community, we value friendship and family, in the form of our sisterhoods and brotherhoods. How we treat our blood family should be no different than how we treat our Greek family. And I think family values can be applied to the outside community as well. By treating our community as family, we work hard to make sure we do the best we can for our neighbors. I think generally people value the same things, just not to the same extent as others.

Marting Luther King. Jr. once said, "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment."

To go along with Dr. King, I think that our values intertwined create our sense of community because we believe in the same things and cherish the same things. We are all one community because we share mutual feelings and work together. So my values work together with the values of others to build on our community.