Julia: Reflecting on my GSP Experience
This past fall, I was the student speaker at GSP’s Global Citizenship in Practice (GCIP) event. I have really enjoyed my time in GSP and was honored to be asked. I’m proud of the way my speech turned out, and in an act of reflection, thought it may be meaningful to walk through my writing process, what led me to the beliefs I harbor as a Global Citizen, and the response I received from the GSP community after delivering my speech.
A lot of the curriculum at GSP focuses on organizing for global social justice and the GCIP event showcases perspectives on how to engage with life, community, and global social justice in practice. Throughout my adult life, I’ve continuously tried to flush out what I value and why. I’ve spoken extensively with past mentors about how I wanted to do work that was meaningful and that aligned with my values. The Global Scholars Program curriculum, including GSP courses ALA 210: Defining Critical Global Issues, ALA 211: Addressing Critical Global Issues, and ALA 470: Organizing for Global Social Justice, curated a space for me to think carefully about what I find meaningful and worthwhile. Through organizing, advocacy, and community gathering, I was able to discern a sense of intentionality with the mindful practices I weave into life and the ethical standard to which I hold myself.
I was very honored when Dr. Peters asked me to be the 2023 GCIP student speaker. I would come to his office hours frequently last year, asking very pointed questions about how to have positive interactions as a global citizen. Working through the historical precedents of nonviolent protest movements, and critical scholarship on peace, through conversation, was a really meaningful experience that I was grateful to have access to.
Writing a 15-minute speech for a large audience of both peers and professors was, at first, an overwhelming task. I started by going through a list of general themes I wanted to touch on. I wanted to talk about my family and my education, as that’s what my values are grounded in. I wanted to touch on global travel, peace scholarship and public policy, including my brief stint at the Institute for Economics and Peace, in Brussels, Belgium, cut short by an injury that would hold surprising lessons.
Julia served as the GSP Student Speaker at Global Citizenship in Practice 2023.
Something I’ve always done when I’m not exactly sure how to articulate what I want to say is to just start writing. I put a timer on my phone for five minutes and wrote as much as I possibly could in those five minutes. A narrative started forming and I let the speech unveil itself as I went on. It basically wrote itself.
Photo taken by Julia during her flight from Detroit to Belgium.
I had put so much effort into finding the correct formula for how to live purposefully and how to do good well. The work I’ve done in the past as a policy analyst and my fateful accident in Brussels taught me a powerful lesson: there is no language to global citizenship; it’s just the compassion we choose to intentionally show each other every day.
The memories I have of surviving the trip back to America empower me to this day. When I think back on the hours I spent alone, injured, without cell-service, facing a language barrier in a foreign hospital, I feel proud of my resilience and grounded in the love that was there to greet me when I got home. That’s where we all must go to figure out who we are and what we care about. Home doesn’t need to be a material place, it just needs to be a place of stability where you can look clearly at your routines, and your intentions. Home makes me feel secure, and from that place of security healing can begin.
The response I had from the GSP community about the topics and lived experiences I discussed in my speech were filled with kindness. In my speech, I shared about topics that were dear and very personal to me. It felt great to open myself up to this community and be instantly met with an outpouring of love. I love writing. I feel like I am my best self when speaking my mind and putting my thoughts into words. It was an honor to be the GCIP speaker. It was a really reflective activity that helped me to articulate my values in a way that was meaningful to both myself and the audience. I would love for my reflections on my thought process while writing the speech, and the reaction I received from it, to exist in conversation with it.
Below, find the final recording of my speech.