Allegra Hu reflects on her experience in UNIV 2001 and how it pushed her to have deeper conversations about existential topics with friends and family. She discusses how assignments on gender roles, sexuality, racism, and social justice resonated with her personally. The pandemic has made her realize how much she takes for granted in life. One of her favorite videos was Baby X, which supported her view that not assigning gender to children could be beneficial. She also enjoyed preparing a presentation on millennials and religion, through which she gained insight into her own feelings of disconnection from spirituality. Overall, the course helped her broaden her perspective, acknowledge her privilege, and appreciate where she comes from.
Allegra Hu reflects on her experience in UNIV 2001 and how it pushed her to have deeper conversations about existential topics with friends and family. She discusses how assignments on gender roles, sexuality, racism, and social justice resonated with her personally. The pandemic has made her realize how much she takes for granted in life. One of her favorite videos was Baby X, which supported her view that not assigning gender to children could be beneficial. She also enjoyed preparing a presentation on millennials and religion, through which she gained insight into her own feelings of disconnection from spirituality. Overall, the course helped her broaden her perspective, acknowledge her privilege, and appreciate where she comes from.
Allegra Hu reflects on her experience in UNIV 2001 and how it pushed her to have deeper conversations about existential topics with friends and family. She discusses how assignments on gender roles, sexuality, racism, and social justice resonated with her personally. The pandemic has made her realize how much she takes for granted in life. One of her favorite videos was Baby X, which supported her view that not assigning gender to children could be beneficial. She also enjoyed preparing a presentation on millennials and religion, through which she gained insight into her own feelings of disconnection from spirituality. Overall, the course helped her broaden her perspective, acknowledge her privilege, and appreciate where she comes from.
Allegra Hu reflects on her experience in UNIV 2001 and how it pushed her to have deeper conversations about existential topics with friends and family. She discusses how assignments on gender roles, sexuality, racism, and social justice resonated with her personally. The pandemic has made her realize how much she takes for granted in life. One of her favorite videos was Baby X, which supported her view that not assigning gender to children could be beneficial. She also enjoyed preparing a presentation on millennials and religion, through which she gained insight into her own feelings of disconnection from spirituality. Overall, the course helped her broaden her perspective, acknowledge her privilege, and appreciate where she comes from.
What stuck with me the most throughout my time in UNIV 2001 was how my favorite assignments in the class pushed me to start conversations with my friends and family about existential topics we usually wouldn’t breach. These topics were presented to us as either readings, documentaries, websites, or other various forms of media. The topics that resonated with me the most were the ones that I could personally relate to having experienced certain degrees of them. This includes themes of gender roles, sexuality, racism, gender-identity, privilege, and social justice. The coronavirus pandemic has definitely put things into perspective for me, and I’ve been realizing how much I take my life and my privilege for granted. Going forward I plan on going into the world with less judgement and more understanding of the people around me and what they might be going through. There are definitely silver linings to the pandemic but One of my favorite videos that we watched was the Baby X video, because I’ve constantly wondered what it would be like to raise a child without assigning it any gender. I’ve theorized for a while that it would be beneficial for children to not be assigned a gender until they hit puberty, and the Baby X video supported that theory. The gender binary is a social construct and a prison, designed to reinforce heteronormative gender roles on society. If children are taught from a young age that gender doesn’t matter as long as you treat each other with respect, then maybe these heternormative ideals will start to crumble. My favorite assignment was the millennials & religion presentation that I prepared. In order to personally engage with the topic of Millenials & Religion, I decided to interview my parents individually to get their stance on religion and spirituality. Although neither of them are millennials, talking to them helped me understand why I felt so disconnected from my spirituality, a feeling shared by many others in my generation. While getting through Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, I found it difficult to relate to the steadfast faith some of the characters had in the religions present in their cultures and lives. Things Fall Apart conveys a direct critique of how the colonizers used the Christian religion to manipulate native peoples into subordinacy in order to expand their territory. It made me put into perspective the changes humanity has gone through together to get to a point where the majority of future generations won’t have faith in religious institutions. I am a decently introspective and self-reflective person, but because I spend so much energy on resolving things internally, I consequently find it easy to get stuck in a singular perspective, and forget about others and the world around me. The documentary “This Changes Everything” focuses on broadening the viewers’ perspective by showing individual and unique instances of protest against climate change and institutionalized colonialism. Watching “This Changes Everything” while the pandemic was happening was interesting timing because of how everyone in the world, no matter their social status or geographical location, is being affected. It’s really easy, especially in a Utopia like Vancouver, to forget that climate change is already affecting the people who can’t protect themselves or leave the affected area due to socioeconomic reasons. Vancouver’s homeless problem is the closest look we have into the lives of the underprivileged in the city. I definitely feel a lot more self-conscious of my privilege whenever I am out and about now. Going to such an international school has its benefits, and I have been able to gain cross-cultural perspective throughout the entirety of my time at FDU. Conversations that happen in class where I got to hear a Korean students’ opinion on American students is something I would probably not get to hear unless I asked about it directly. My biggest takeaways from this courses include learning how to acknowledge my privilege, not take anything for granted, and to appreciate where I’m from and where I’m going! I am excited for the future, and I plan on continuing to take care of myself and staying optimistic.
