Month: March 2023

I met with career services today in order to review my resume and find out the changes required to enter the workforce. I learned that my resume is very wrong! Which is okay, because that is what I needed. I haven’t learned about resumes since my senior year of high school. Donna gave me several key materials in order to revise my resume into something that is more mature and targeted towards my goals. These resources will allow me to write a well rounded and professional resume. I also want to schedule a follow up meeting with Donna once my resume has been rewritten to ensure that I took her advice in the right or proper direction. Donna was extrememly helpful and kind to me for this process.

Democracy and citizenship are a huge part of our country. It is dependent on being well rounded individuals in every aspect of life. In order to understand democracy and citizenship, the liberal arts and humanities have to play a role. Nussbaum states, “In other words, the roles of the arts in schools and colleges is twofold. They cultivate capacities for play and empathy in a general way, and they address cultural blind spots” (108). Nussbaum also mentioned that children at a young age will be able to understand school lessons better when arts are involved. The example that was given was learning about Rosa Parks simply through a textbook versus learning through a textbook and then performing a play. It reminded me of my elementary school days where we would cultivate plays for Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr, Abraham Lincoln, and so on. I remember these historical events vividly and I think I owe it to the aspect of arts, imagination, and creativity in that process. This is very similar to the citizenship course at UNE. You are required to meet every other week, read several articles about an impending topic, and provide your own current events article to discuss. That’s a great aspect because it engages the students to be open and discuss with each other. However, the most important aspect of the citizenship class is actually performing citizenship. I did not fully understand the point of the class until I began my volunteer hours and actually began performing the act. It shows how the two topics relate. Nussbaum also mentioned “narrative imagination” in the beginning of the chapter (95). It is important to understand that people come from all different walks of life and being able to put yourself in the heart of volunteering, the heart of the community, or the heart of the humanities can help make well rounded citizens for our communities. It is the act of doing and putting yourself out there to understand. Sciences teach you the rights and the wrongs but they don’t dive into the possibilities of being both right and wrong like mentioned in previous classes. Citizenship and the humanities teach you both and provide students with narrative imagination.

Our world today values STEM programs and majors at a different level than they do with humanities. It is clear in budgeting within colleges, pressures put on importance in high school, and the way that humanities are discussed between everyday individuals. When I think of instrumental value, I think of money. Money can be used to purchase things and it’s value is heavy. Money is huge when it comes to how the world works. When it comes to the humanities, it has instrumental value. For example, Brody says, “To address the larger challenge, teachers of ethics and humanities in medical settings have to be more articulate in addressing how the dysfunctional US healthcare system has been shaped by the ideology of economism, and what this external environment does to efforts to teach ethics and professionalism to students and residents” (4). People value a healthcare system that works properly, so if humanitarian and ethical ideologies are introduced, then humanities creates an instrumental value for others. If students have this further knowledge, then they also have an instrumental value for the humanities. I am not sure if humanities has an instrumental value for myself at this point in my life, but I would say that it has intrinsic value for me. Intrinsic value, to me, can best be described as happiness. It does not provide a physical value that has an endpoint. When I learn about the humanities it creates a value within myself and benefits me. It gives me “ah-ha” moments and I feel like I am learning key factors for my life. But I didn’t always feel this way. It is similar to Clune’s statement, “The first year literature student doesn’t begin my class with a capacity to judge literature equivalent to mine” (5). I think most professors forget about that ideology. Sometimes you have to ease into literary analysis and start with easier pieces. I can confidently say that the work I was doing my first year at college is very different from the work I can dissect now. I guess confidence could also be an intrinsic value of humanities as well.