16 perspectives

(Vanessa Casavant talks with program founder John Quinn at the opening reception. Photo by Michelle Hedenskoog.)

Something I learned in sixth grade struck me last night as I was leaving the welcome dinner. If a bowl of fruit is placed in the middle of a table and everyone around the table is asked to draw a picture of the bowl, no two pictures look the same. It is a lesson about perspective. While surrounded by people of different backgrounds last night, it dawned on me that life is the bowl of fruit and none of us will draw it the same. All 16 of us are at the same point in our careers, but each of us has arrived at this moment in a different way. Some of us are leaving home for the first time, some of us are married and have children, and some of us fall in between. We're not just from a wide array of cultures, but of life experiences.

-- Vanessa Renee Casavant, City University of New York-Hunter College,

Peninsula Daily News, Port Angeles, Wash.