Humanities Core End of the Year Reflection

From my very first essay written on The Republic by Plato to my final research paper written on the postwar impacts of Hello Kitty, I have grown immensely as a writer and thinker. While I do not believe I am a particularly strong writer and I am still improving on my ability to articulate well, I've definitely come a long way from thinking 4 pages of MLA format writing is considered a lot. I have had my fair share of essays written in high school, but nothing prepared me for the rigor and effort I must put into Humanities Core to succeed. Although getting an A in the class was a great motivator to do all my assigned readings and prepare extensively for my midterms and finals, all of the content that were taught by the professors were extremely enlightening. Over the course of this past year, I finally understood what the theme of Wordbuilding is. To me, worldbuilding is such a broad term; anything can be considered as worldbuilding as long as you structure it correctly. But I've seen the patterns of challenging unconventionality, questioning the convenient narratives we know, and diving deeper beyond the superficial aspects of stories, histories, paintings, and video games in the lectures and seminars. As an Asian American myself, Professor Fan's lectures resonated the most with my upbringing and my relationship to my parents and I'm sure many other students did as well. Perhaps the most challenging material was Professor Giannopoulou's unit on Plato's philosophy and Professor Robertson's unit on communist figures. Literature and history have been two of my weakest subjects and Humanities Core has really challenged me to go beyond my limits of the information I takeaway from the lectures and form my own analysis. We practice humanistic inquiry to make meaning of everything we experience and these past three quarters has taught me to be less rigid and biased in observing the world around me. I want to be an open-minded human being, whether it's on an interpersonal level or in a more worldly context. Rather than taking into account different perspectives and opinions to form better understandings of topics and artifacts, we should constantly be mindful of the possibilities of  expanding our knowledge and challenging our existing beliefs. By remaining open-minded, we can foster personal growth, promote understanding, and contribute to a more inclusive and empathetic society. I don't think I'll be able to view social media or watch movies without contemplating on how nothing is ever portrayed fully and it is up to us to figure out what has been concealed. By reflecting on the narratives others put out and challenging my own beliefs in an objective manner, I can adopt a more critical mindset to evaluate sources and develop a more nuanced understanding of people and the world. 

My first page of handwritten notes from the first seminar session in Fall quarter show the amount of information Dr. Siakel threw at us and I must say I was thrown off guard. But thankfully the rest of the seminar sessions were not as hardcore as this first one and I have also switched to typing notes as it is way more efficient.

My piece of quilt I created for my digital archive post took much longer than expected but I had a lot of fun quilting this piece. Even though it took long to cut the individual pieces of fabric, construct a design I was satisfied with, and quilt each stitch one by one, it was very fulfilling because I crochet and embroider in my free time.

This is my Prospectus assignment outline and bubble map draft on my Goodnotes app. I recall refusing to start on this because my ideas were all in a jumble and I wasn't sure how I was going to organize my essay but clearly I was able to reach a point of clarity that helped me start writing drafts for my essay.