What I Bring to the Table The different skills and passions that an individual possesses, play a key role in the make up of the community in which they live. A community is comprised of many people whom all have different skills and passions for various things. Having this kind of diversity can have positive or negative effects on multiple aspects of the community. Diversity can positively impact a community because, the different strengths and passions of the population can allow them to work better together, as a team. However, it could also negatively impact a community because, individuals may have different opinions or ways of doing things, which could make it difficult to work together. Being able to work together as a team, is an important part of a community because, a situation could occur at any time where the group needs everyone to contribute in order to be successful. Therefore, the different skills and passions of individuals contributes to the success of a community, as they can allow the group to work well together. These aspects of a community pertain to the various community levels in which we live at Virginia Tech. For example, in the SERVE community, it is important that there are individuals with different skills and passions because it is helpful when completing service. It is also helpful as we all live together in the same place, so we need to have a mixture of different types of people in order to create a strong community within our hall, and on campus. Another example of where these aspects of a community pertains to the community levels at Virginia Tech, is in the New River Valley community through work with the community partner. This goes along with the importance of individuals with different skills and passions when completing service, and is critical because it allows us to work better together as a team to do service and help the surrounding community. Although it is important that individuals use their skills and passions to work together, it is also important that individuals know what their personal strengths and weaknesses are, and what they bring to the table. My personal strengths include; consistency, harmony, analytical, responsibility, and discipline. I display consistency through my life, as I am aware of the need to treat everyone with equality and I try to do this in all situations. Consistency is also displayed in my life as I function the best in a consistent environment, where people know what is expected. I show harmony in my life, as I like to be in consensus with others, and I do not enjoy conflict or arguing. I am analytical because I tend to think about the factors that might affect a situation, and tend to question why things are the way they are. Being analytical, I also like to know the facts of a situation before I make a judgement or form thoughts about it. Responsibility is a trait that I embrace in many ways. First, I show responsibility by completing all of my school work on time, and not forgetting about assignments. I also like to be on time whenever I am going somewhere. Another way that I show responsibility is by taking ownership of anything that I say I will do, whether it is large or small, and feeling emotionally bound to follow through with it. Lastly, another one of my strengths is discipline. I display discipline through my life, as I enjoy routine and structure and living in an organized and orderly environment. I also show discipline as I like to plan out my week based on any timelines or deadlines that I may have, and I like to use a planner to keep myself organized. Having an organized schedule and being careful of any deadlines, helps me feel more like a more productive person. I feel that these last two strengths are my strongest, because I think that I display them the most. One important thing to do with our strengths is to focus on them and improve them, instead of focusing and working on our weaknesses. This is important to know because most people think that we should try to focus on improving our weaknesses, and let our strengths be. However, in reality, we need to focus on what we are good at, so that our strengths become even stronger.