How I broke my single story about Ryan.
During this exercise we were given the tasks of getting to know our “other” in order to break the single story’s that flood our society and the way we think about other people. I was able to get to know Ryan, he told me about his family, his hopes for the future, and even his biggest fear. I gave Ryan the same information about myself so he could make a similar Instagram post about his experience. To fully understand this assignment, you would have to know what a “single story is” I define a single story as a judge meant made on other before truly getting to know them. Adichie an African American Novelist says the main problem with having single story’s 
“is how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story”. But what I found with Ryan is not that my single story was wrong is that it was just incomplete. I originally thought that Ryan was just the quiet kid in the back of the class, but after we talked, I learned that Ryan loves to play and design video games and values his relationship with his family above anything else. As I mentioned in my Instagram post me and Ryan are both very different for one I enjoy playing high level sports well Ryan enjoys playing video games, secondly Ryan tends to shy away from putting himself out there but well I struggle with it I try my best to be outgoing. One thing me and Ryan have in common is that we are both extremely shy. When you first meet us, we are quite and don’t say much but once you get to know us, we break out of our shell. Even though I didn’t get to see Ryan out of his shell during our conversation, I’m sure he’s more open and outgoing once you get to know him. One take away I’ve learned through this challenge is that breaking stereotypes and single story’s starts with us. It starts in the hallways at school and the bus stops in town by simply not judging a book by its cover because there’s always more to people then what you see on the surface. Wesch an anthropology professor did the same challenge just on a much larger scale, his big take away was “love is not something that happens to you, it’s something you do, it’s a practice and you can get better at it”. But over all this challenge help me see that I need to stop making single story and really get to know people before I judge them. I’m glad I had this opportunity to have gotten to know Ryan and break the single story I had made about him.