As part of the University Honors Program (UHP) at the University of Cincinnati, I took the Gateway to University Honors course for Fall semester 2016. This course is, as stated by the website: “Gateway to University Honors provides students with the opportunity to understand what it means to be a member of the University Honors Program and the requirements and benefits of their participation. Through a series of reflective assignments and discussions, students will begin to explore how they want to make the most of their time at the University of Cincinnati and beyond.”

Mini Experience

For our experience, our group attended a talk on Non Human Persons talk on October 21st, 2016 by Christina Andrews from York University. I am not the best at working in groups and had a bit of difficulty organizing and communicating with the five people in my group on one experience we all wanted. This talk to me did not seem like a research talk; and, after attending the talk, I still believe that this was not a research experience. The presentation was extremely vague in describing the data and research as it has not been completed yet and the presentation only laid out goals and ideas for the project described why the topic is important. Although I did not expect to, I enjoyed the project and topic and talked to the speaker after the presentation ended for a good 20 to 30 minutes in an attempt to better understand why she was so passionate about the protection of animals. This is a new field and I always enjoy looking into new topic and learning more about them. Not what I had originally expected, I still enjoyed the experience and was able to learn about an interesting topic.

This makes my sound arrogant putting myself above my classmates but I just cannot stand how they believe can brush aside my frustration at their seemingly unreasonable topic choice; then simply tell me to go along with the idea because the rest of the group agrees on its validity. My purpose in taking this course and trying new experiences is to learn more about myself and if I cannot understand the premise of a subject, I will never understand myself and my groupmates trying to brush that asides still irks me extraordinarily. I must not let myself become livid over this; the distinction between my interest and the rest of the groups was shown during the presentation. Some of the people in my group left early or just as the talk ended while I stayed behind to discuss the topic with the speaker after the time for questions ended because I wanted to learn why the treatment of non human persons is important. This extra learning and growth is what I enjoy, even if the topic is something I did not initially expect or want. I am not better than my classmates, I simply view the world differently and approach challenges in my own manner; not inherently better or worse, simply different.

Works Cited

Andrews, Kristin and Lesson, Sarah Beth. “Belief and Representation in Nonhuman Animals”. For the Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Psychology. York University. 2016. source.

Final Reflection

As a Global Citizen Scholar I will endeavor to improve the lives of those around me by completing work in my field. While working, I will hopefully continue adding work to the public domain, while helping to tutor and develop more curriculum for students. As part of the UHP program at UC, I will continue doing research, making new open source projects, and exploring opportunities to do community service and help teach in my local community. I do not wish to make some ground breaking discovery, but implement and improve upon the work that many other people have already completed. There is a world of possibilities and I hope to use my time in academia to explore more about my field and identify what I want to pursue within Computer Science.