I possess the tongue of a serpent. One that has always known how to move quickly, how to defend, how to argue, how to strike when I feel misunderstood. For much of my life, I understood speech through its sharpest uses. Words could protect me. They could expose what was wrong. They could name injustice, challenge dismissal, and refuse silence. I have never been afraid of having a voice, but this semester taught me that dialogue is not only about the courage to speak; it is also about possessing the humility and discipline to listen.
Through the Doyle Dialogue Fellows program, I began to understand dialogue as something more intentional than conversation and more human than debate. Dialogue requires presence. It requires curiosity, humility, and the willingness to remain with another person even when their perspective unsettles you. The In Your Shoes™ sessions were especially meaningful to me, forcing me to slow down and inhabit another person’s words rather than immediately compare them to my own. Instead of listening to respond, listening became a responsibility: to hear someone else’s experiences, hold them carefully, and make the other person feel understood.
Resetting the Table (RTT) also shaped the way I think about conflict. Before this program, I often associated conflict with rupture: the moment in conversations when individuals become too divided to understand each other. RTT shifted my perspective, showing me that conflict can also reveal what people are protecting, fearing, grieving, or hoping for. It taught me that people’s positions are complex, a nuance that may hide pain, loyalty, memory, identity, or fear. That does not mean every belief is harmless or that every conflict can be easily resolved, but it does mean that productive dialogue requires more than proving a point. It requires creating the conditions where individuals can speak honestly without being reduced to the worst assumption about them.
This program has also changed how I think about polarization. I used to see polarization as simply people becoming more extreme in their views. Now, I see it as something more intimate and more dangerous: the loss of curiosity. Polarization grows when people become symbols instead of human beings, when communities inherit pain without inheriting the tools to process it, and when certainty in beliefs becomes easier than understanding. Dialogue does not erase difference, and it should not ask people to abandon their convictions. Instead, it asks individuals to engage across difference without surrendering their humanity or denying the humanity of the person across from them.
Moving forward, I want to carry these skills into my academic, personal, and professional life. As someone interested in law, human rights, advocacy, and public service, I know I will continue entering spaces shaped by disagreement, power, and identity. The skills I practiced this semester, ranging from reflective listening and perspective-taking to asking better questions and creating space for honest conversation, will help me engage those spaces with more care and discipline. I do not want to lose the part of myself that speaks boldly against injustice. But I do want to make sure that my boldness is guided by purpose and a desire to understand rather than instinct alone.
I also know that fostering dialogue will not always be easy. There will be moments when listening feels uncomfortable or when anger feels more natural than empathy. However, the Doyle Dialogue Fellows program taught me that dialogue is not weakness or avoidance. Rather, it is a practice of staying present long enough for something more honest to emerge. It is the choice to build trust in places where dismissal feels easier.
I possess the tongue of a serpent. Yet, that tongue now weaves my thoughts in ways that are slower, more intentional, and more humane. It no longer exists only to defend or strike. It can question. It can listen. It can soften. It can build. And perhaps that is what this program has taught me most: that the same voice capable of protesting can also become a tool for understanding.
