Humanities is about challenging the ways you think, the things you’ve believed, and going beyond face value to truly understand things. Humanities is about collaboration, a group effort to analyze, criticize, and give insight to difficult texts and topics. Humanities has opened my eyes to things I have never thought about before and pushed me to always dig deeper. Humanities is about asking questions. Discourse is encouraged and disagreement is expected.
The greatest thing I learned from taking Humanities this year was not just my new found understanding of topics I’ve never studied before like Dance or the perception of art, but that Humanities encourages you to be creative, take chances, and to pursue your interests. I never would haver thought I would find myself on the street of an authors boyhood home we read in Dr. Wills unit, able to contextualize the past to understand the issues that still remain in the present. I never would have thought I’d be able to understand and discuss the similarities between Russian monuments to Stalin and Southern Confederate memorials. Humes has taught me to find connections,(The Course is Called Connections and Conflicts for a reason), and think harder about how the past impacts our present, and how we move forward in the future.
Humanities the course seeks to answer the questions that humanities poses. Humanities tries to answer why groups of people have repeatedly been seen as “other” and left out of the human family. Humanities seeks to answer how people could use the Bible to justify the enslavement of people and deny African-American’s of their rights for hundreds of years. Humanities asks if it’s acceptable to look at pictures of grotesque horrors and suffering from places all around the world. Humanities asks you to think about how we perceive and analyze specific things across cultures and time.
Most importantly, Humanities is a family. The people in Humanities are some of the most genuine and amazing people I have ever met in my life. From the professors, to the archivists, to the librarians, to the fellows, and to the students, everyone cares about each other and wants each other to be their best selves. I have had the privilege to spend a year in the Humanities class, and I can confidently say that I have met lifelong friends already. When finding out the news that we had to go remote, I was devastated because I knew how much I would miss spending time with my Humanities friends and professors on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
My year in Humanities was filled with lots of highs, and maybe just a few lows. I had so many great moments in Humanities, but when I think back upon the year one really sticks out. It happened just a few short weeks into the semester when one of my best friends that I had met at Sapere Aude, Kade, had suffered a collapsed lung and had to be hospitalized. I couldn’t have imagined being in his situation at the start of my college career. I’ve had my fair few of hospital visits, but I always had my family right by my side to make me feel safe. Kade’s family were in Montana, and it would be a few days until they were able to fly in and be with him. Fortunately, Kade is one of the strongest people I know and if there was one thing that got him through that time it was the Humanities family. The support he got was honestly unreal. I’ve never seen so many people be so supportive of someone after only knowing him for a few weeks. Humanities made Kade feel welcome, and people like Kade made me feel welcome. That’s how I knew Humanities was truly special.
So I really am going to miss Humanities. Without it, I don’t know how my freshman year would have gone. I met so many great people, great professors, and learned a lot of awesome things. So to all the Humes students, the Professors, the Fellows, and everyone else involved… Thank you.
Here are some of my favorite pictures of the year with some great people 🙂
