As you may have already worked out I come from Glasgow, Scotland's largest city.
Although I love the city and have called it home for almost all of my life, it is by no means perfect.
When I was growing up in the 1980's the city went through a difficult time as it went from an economy based on heavy engineering and shipbuilding to today's service based economy. Unemployment was as high as most of us have ever known with all the attendant social ills worklessness creates.
It was also, to some extent, a divided city. Two separate religious groups Catholics and Protestants, with their children going to different schools and supporting different football teams (football is a big deal in Glasgow) led two suspicion and division.
I grew up in the Catholic community, which in the 80's still suffered from some historical job based discrimination.
Fast forward 30 years the communities are almost entirely integrated, people are more likely to send their children to the best school locally regardless of denomination and there is no Catholic/Protestant job discrimination to speak of. The football teams still exist though.
I am sad to say I became part of the problem, I had few protestant friends and would judge people based their name trying to assess their religious roots. I am still completely ashamed of this now.
Thankfully, when I went to university I began to slowly realise this was all nonsense and any form of discrimination is patently wrong.
I made a conscious effort to unlearn everything about judging people based on their religion; it took me a while but I can safely say it is not something I have given any thought to in many years.
So is it possible to unlearn other things like our reticence and lack of confidence?
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