Gateway to Honors was my first introduction to the University Honors Program (UHP), a highly selective program that accepts only the top 7% of UC's undergraduate student body. While it was just a half-semester course with Professor Kyle Key, it pushed me to think deeply about my goals and what I wanted to achieve during my time at UC as a University Honors Scholar.

Writing the Global Citizen Scholar Roadmap made me reflect on my journey from India to UC. Moving to the United States at eighteen wasn't just about getting a degree - it was about challenging myself to grow beyond the ideas I grew up around. It was about being the first in my family to take the risk of studying abroad and inspiring all my siblings and cousins to take a shot at their own dreams. To me a foreign education, especially one that surrounded me with a highly heterogenous community of students, meant that I would gain perspective on a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and thought processes - something that would set me up for success in an increasingly globalized society. 

A moment that really stood out to me was when Professor Key sent me an email commending me for sharing my experiences in class. In one of our class discussions of diversity and inclusivity, I shared my perspective on what constitutes genuine and impactful discourse - "When you avoid asking the uncomfortable questions about someone else's lived experience, you limit yourself to seeking answers within your own perception of the world, which often times is biased towards your own experiences. While the questions you ask matter, how you ask them matters more - be curious and open-minded, while acknowledging that no one owes you their story. Personally, I don't mind questions about my race, culture, or religion as long as they come from a place of curiosity as opposed to contempt.  In fact, I am more than happy to share my reasons for not wearing the hijab, avoiding certain foods, why many women in my country wear bindis (those dots on their foreheads), why I don't have the strongest accent, why I am lighter skinned compared to the Indians that you see, or why my sister and I have different last names. The answers to those questions are what makes me, me. I am someone who exercises her freedom to dress as she chooses and eat the foods she loves most. I come from a country where Hindu tradition calls for newly-wed women to wear bindis as a symbol of marriage – though my family, being Muslim, doesn't follow this practice. My education at a top ten private all-girls high school in India combined with my belief that the best way to connect with others is to mirror their language patterns explains my accent. Being from Northern India explains my fairer complexion compared to those from the South, who live closer to the equator. As for my last name being different from my sister's? That was simply because my relative who filled out my legal documents accidentally put down my father's first name as my surname and my postpartum mother did not have the energy to change it before we flew out to Saudi Arabia to visit my dad." 

As someone who usually shies away from speaking in large groups, his recognition of my voice as "powerful" meant a lot. It reminded me of what I wrote in my "What Matters Most" reflection - about becoming someone who isn't afraid to take risks, attacks challenges head on, and is confident of her uniqueness.

The course helped me see how my personal ambitions aligned perfectly with UHP's vision of developing scholars who can tackle complex global problems. Our discussions about leadership and inclusiveness showed me clear paths toward becoming the kind of leader who can make real change in the world.

Below are the two essays I wrote for this course - my Global Citizen Scholar Roadmap and What Matters Most reflection.

"The best way to predict the future is to design it."

   - Buckminister Fuller

American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist

Energy, its conservation, and its environmental impact are among the most critical challenges facing our society. Our decisions about energy production and consumption today will echo through generations, shaping not just our future but the very sustainability of human civilization globally. This initial thought is what drew me to the honors seminar "Energy, Environment, and Society - The Answer Is Blowing in the Wind!"

  One of the first questions we addressed during Week 1 of the seminar, was what we hoped to achieve by taking this course. While my major, Computer Science, may not directly relate to environmental issues, a large part of the decision-making regarding these issues involves statistics - statistics obtained from computer-evaluated environmental data. For example, data analysis of oil production in the 1950s, Hubbert's Peak Theory in particular, predicted that oil production would peak in the 1970s. While his prediction of the timeline was initially accurate, the advent of newer technologies like hydraulic fracturing shifted the oil production peak to somewhere between the years 2010 and 2030. Perhaps the bigger impact was how it affected the political sentiment as well as people's trust in it. Thus, the mathematics and computer science involved in the decision-making process regarding environmental issues became an excellent motivator for me to register for this seminar. 

Over the course of the next few weeks, students were divided into teams and we debated some of the most discussed energy conservation and climate change issues. The topics ranged from "The Need for Immediate and Substantial Action to Limit the Effects of Climate Change" to "Nuclear Power and Its Role in Minimizing Greenhouse Gas Emissions thus, Climate Change." I think one of the most valuable parts of this seminar was debating these topics in favor of opinions that I personally opposed. It provided me with an opportunity to understand things from a very different perspective. A major part of effective communication, especially when trying to change someone's mind, is recognizing their most important motivators and how they arrived at the conclusions that they currently believe in. What may be the best reason for you to do something may not be a reason that is good enough for someone else to even consider viewing issues in a different light. Thus, by understanding the other side of the debate, I believe I have significantly improved my ability to address people with conflicting views. 

A major part of the seminar was to select a geographic region and create and defend a "balance sheet". In my paper, I decided to study the state of California. Using varying credible sources, I provided a breakdown of California's current Energy Mix (both demand and supply side) as well as proposed an Energy Mix that may be more environmentally sustainable if implemented. Read the paper below for more details. 

Overall, I gained a lot from this class. While I was a little disappointed about the study-abroad component to Scotland being canceled and the classes being virtual due to COVID, I was able to participate in numerous fruitful discussions that helped shape my perspective on environmental issues affecting us today.   

My exploration of education as a tool for instilling unity and bridging divides between communities last semester led me to realize the importance of accurate representation and information in media to prevent the villainization and dehumanization of already marginalized communities.While the education imparted in formal institutions serves as an important source of opinions, media—including films, music, and video games—is another crucial space where both young and old learn about experiences outside their own. This thought led me to explore representation-focused design through Dr. Eliane Bettocchi and Dr. Evan Torner's Decolonial Game Design Seminar, this semester. 

The course challenges students to explore the questions: How can we design games differently? How can we foster dialogue between students in the American Midwest and Global South, an intercultural exchange premised on the game medium? How can we work to critique and decolonize game design, so as to create more space for others whose voices are not so often heard?

In the first half of the course, we spent time establishing the true meaning of decolonization and decoupling it from its casual adoption in educational and social sciences as a synonym for social justice or reform in those spaces while conveniently omitting Indigenous peoples and their struggle for sovereignty, or their contributions to the decolonial framework. As Tuck and Yang emphasize, decolonization is not a metaphor for other things we want to do to improve our societies and schools; it is a deeply unsettling historical process that decentres settler futurity and instead focuses solely on Indigenous sovereignty and futurity. We discussed the problematic parallels to colonialism in some of the most popular games like Settlers of Catan or Minecraft and deliberated the concept of a Hero in said games and how it differs from what a Hero might look like in a decolonial version of the game. Furthermore, we also established the distinction between bad, neutral, good and excellent representation of a community.

Midway through the semester we visited the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, where learned about the estimated 100,000 enslaved Black Americans who risked everything to cross the river northward in pursuit of freedom. The museum stood as a powerful testament to both the unimaginable horrors of slavery and the extraordinary courage shown by those who fled bondage, as well as the abolitionists who aided their journey toward freedom and the dream of equality. 

Throughout this seminar, students were required to maintain a Reading and Play Journal that documented their thoughts and learnings from their experience playing the assigned games. Within my journal I analyzed how "80 Days" by inkle subverts typical colonial game mechanics, and reimagining "Risk" with mechanics that acknowledge native resistance in the form of Internal Politics Cards. I also explored the environmental injustice in "NORCO," and examined the potential adaptation of anti-colonial Brazilian cinema, How Tasty are my Little French Men, into an interactive format. Below is a copy of my journal entries.