Gateway Work

This idea of the Global citizen scholar is what the University Honors Program aims to make all of it’s students into, and it is a nebulous concept purposefully, the idea behind it is this idea that it is something to be defined by every member of the program form themself, but in this, I must set out to define it for myself. To me the idea of the Global Citizen Scholar is someone who sees the world as a place of learning and strives to improve it for the next generation, both in terms of how we live and by making all things in life education and friendship more accessible to every person that the hypothetical scholar interacts with in their life. They should seek to be aware of what has come before and be an activist for the future, and they must try to help people to grow alongside them. I feel as though this definition really hasn’t changed much for me, this has been what I feel the goal for every person should be for quite a while, but I feel I am more able to meet this goal now and I have better language to describe it as well with terms like Global Citizen Scholar and the concepts of leadership and innovation which have been implanted over this semester. Over the next year, my two goals are to create 10 art pieces each month and to do some form of internship or volunteering over the course of the summer. I want to do these as I feel that I have not created enough to help people over this semester and I have lacked creativity in my major despite it’s clear focus on design. So I want to do more art in order to help my creativity flourish and ensure I maintain my creative skills that I personally feel allow me to help people to the small degree I am able. In other words, I feel art is a key part of the global citizen scholar idea due to how art is a key part of life and without it, I am not who I am and if I am not doing art or some form of creative process, it feels as though I am not doing enough to meet that goal of aiding others in their own creations and life in general. Conversely with my goal of doing an internship over the summer, I feel that it will give me a lot of practical experience that could really aid me in my studies at college and beyond, furthering that goal of scholarship and knowledge which is laid out by the Honors Program. I think these goals speak to my strengths of creativity and helping people as they are respectively a creative passion and a goal to help people. Both will also help me to become more career ready due to how I function in a design field of Urban planning so creating more art would seriously benefit me and doing an early internship would also help me as it would give me a slight leg up over others in my major and give me practical job experience. These also speak to my values due to how I value service and art incredibly highly above many other values that people hold, and while these don’t really touch on innovation as I am not really doing problem solving, I still feel that it does meet the programs goals. For my Honors experiences, I hope to do a study abroad in Europe, hopefully Germany if possible due to knowing basic German from high school and to use one of my university required Co-ops as another due to how between these two ideas, they will allow me to both see and live in new places, speaking directly to the idea of a GLOBAL Citizen Scholar, meaning someone who is well versed in the world and participates in it, and it will grant me both experience and a new perspective in college on how the world functions from living in new cities and countries. In a previous piece, I discussed how I felt that travel is key to the global citizen scholar due to how it is what allows you to see the world through a truly global lens and I stand by that analysis as I personally think that you can not understand a whole from just one miniscule part, we need to look at the whole by seeing it from many places. The Co-op in particular will aid me through the knowledge I learn outside of a classroom that can’t be found in a university but are key to a comprehensive education nonetheless, what these things are? I’m not sure yet, as I haven’t done the co-op yet, but I hope to learn and teach what I find out.