During my first Winter quarter, I wandered into my first CHID class.
I had heard about "critical thinking" but had never truly understood what it meant to think critically until this class. We read Tsitsi Dangaremba's novels on growing up in rural Zimbabwe during the overthrow of the government, watched films on Robert Mugabe's tragic metamorphosis from eager student to zealous revolutionary of the people to tyrannical dictator, read about the lasting impacts of colonialism throughout the world and tied it all together through our rich, challenging class discussions trying to make sense of the messy knot of race, gender, power and politics in Zimbabwe and far beyond. We fought through the vast gray areas in between the poles of ethical issues--should I as a middle class Global Northerner travel to the Global South because I feel like it? How much do my intentions matter? In what ways could I help or bring harm to the communities in which I would travel? |
For my first essay, I for the first time was able to take a glance behind the words, beyond what the author intended for me to see, deeper than I was "supposed" to delve: I thought critically. I am including this paper as an artifact because it marks a huge turning point in my freshman year, my university experience, and the whole course of my life. It marks the time when I started really developing the skills to really think for myself. It marks the divide between the point when I took everything at face value, assuming the inherent value of socially constructed truths and when I discovered that truth is far more complex than what it admits to being.
You can read the essay below. |
Thinking through images |
Our class collaborated to publish a book together called "Let's WOW It Out: Simple Drawings to Explore Big Ideas." One section of the book (for which "Journeys" is the title image) is called "Journeys: How We Explore." The introduction to the section, I think, is helpful in thinking about the ethics of travel through images. It reads as follows:
As we move through the world, our own lives touch the lives of those we meet. We exchange stories, a few laughs, and sometimes, even tears. As we travel to see and hear more beyond our own familiar experiences, we bear witness to new sights, sounds, and smells. We know that travel expands us in innumerable ways, but sometimes, we too must ask ourselves: just because we can go somewhere else, should we? The questions we ask encourage us to dig deeper, not only about the ethics of our journey, but ourselves as well. Who are we, we might ask? What are the things, ideas and people who have helped shape us? Journeys stretch us, and through this process, we find and make joy. |
In these images I meditated on the ethics of travel, messages about study abroad at UW, and colonialism.
What does each picture say to you? |