High School Symposium 

Highschool Symposium Reflection: 

The High school Symposium took place in an auditorium on the campus of Colorado College. There were groups of around 4-15 students from each school. The students attending the High school Symposium have a global focus and were at the event to learn about current international crises and/or gain an international perspective. The event opened with a guest speaker. The speaker focused on the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine. He emphasized the importance of education and why it is crucial for young adults to educate themselves on foreign events. 

I have always valued education. Our world, especially at Fountain Valley, moves quickly. It’s very easy to detach yourself from the larger reality. Many of us get news notifications, but clicking on those notifications and reading more than a headline is relatively rare for me personally. The speaker at the symposium spoke about the importance of exposing yourself to new and different perspectives and opinions because it can allow us to look at smaller realities with new clarity. When Donald Trump was elected, and throughout his presidency, many leftist voters panicked. News headlines would pop up that would either explicitly state or imply that the political unrest in the United States was the worst global political crisis. When reading these headlines and surrounding yourself with people who follow the same news platforms, you become stuck in one perspective. If you were to look at the 2016 election of Donald Trump with a more global perspective, you would begin to realize that similar political unrest was rampant globally. I hadn’t looked at this situation from a global perspective until I was forced to ask myself questions about what I had selectively educated myself on.