By Allie
The best part of this program, as far as I’m concerned, is being constantly challenged. Everything is challenging: living in a city, working nearly full time, having a class load on top of an internship, being far from home and friends, and having to be a grown-up. It can get tiring, but it’s such a beautiful opportunity for growth. I feel like I’ve become more mature and prepared for the world after college in the last three months than in the rest of college combined.
One of the challenges that I’m learning the most from in this experience is being in a class with students of diverse backgrounds, political persuasions, and disciplines. My seminar, Urban Political and Social Issues, is one such class. We have students from at least six different schools and from many different states; we even have a student from abroad. We have sociology students, law students, economics students, political science students, and art students, among others. We have liberals, conservatives, and moderates. We all have vastly different opinions and ways of thinking about the world.
At K, I take anthropology and sociology classes with mostly other ANSO students who all tend to be fairly liberal. Heated discussion is an exception, not the norm. Generally speaking, students in the class have very similar issues in regards to political, economic, and social issues. Though I feel I’ve learned a great deal in this environment, I sometimes feel overly insulated. I begin to forget that the rest of the world does not agree with my opinions.
Which is why being in Deborah’s seminar is so compelling to me. We have heated discussions every single week in class. I hear very diverse opinions on many social and political issues that I rarely hear at K. Though I sometimes feel very frustrated with the opinions of my classmates, I always understand the extreme value in hearing what they have to say. As a group, we are getting better and better at dialoguing across differences and having genuinely open conversations with each other. I feel like this challenge is expanding my mind and offering me a broader understanding of social issues, and that is entirely invaluable.
Included are links that provide information about one issue we’ve been discussing in class that has had particular resonance with me.
Thank you