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Catherine Celente
On the active citizen continuum, I would define myself as a conscientious citizen. While this is not my ultimate goal of being an active citizen, I have unquestionably become a better citizen by taking this course. Global Citizenship has given me consciousness and curiosity to be an active citizen. Similarly, I don’t believe everyone can become a global citizen immediately because there is a lot to understand about what it means to be a true global citizenship. One significant takeaway of this course is that it has prompted me to ask questions of societal norms. For example, the movie Poverty Inc. was extremely shocking, I had never imagined that NGO’s might be part of the problem of development. I realized that aid is not always beneficial and people do not always want or need help. This has shaped me into a better citizen because I now question what really benefits society.
I would define myself as a conscious citizen because I am now able to ask more educated questions about society. For example, after analyzing the Senior Capstone Project, Mapping Bethlehem, I started to question why there is an unspoken divide between Lehigh and South Bethlehem. I believe a large part of this divide originates from the actual brick wall that runs along Morton Street. While Lehigh cannot knock down this brick wall, Lehigh can incorporate more dorms and events in South Bethlehem. For example, I know that one of the new Residence Halls is going to be within South Bethlehem, this is a good start to begin to intertwine Lehigh and the South Bethlehem community. Now that I have identified the situation I plan to act. Recently, I talked with Bethlehem City Council member Olga Negron when she visited Lehigh. She offered great insight regarding connecting Lehigh and Bethlehem; she said that one of the best ways to get involved was to attend the City Council meetings. Moving forward I plan to attend the City Council meetings to gather more information on the future of Bethlehem and how Lehigh can become more involved.
To consciously live, with an intent to take action when the quality of life of indivduals and groups of people is endangered
My personal values include appreciation, dedication, humility, passion, and compassion.
I aim to be conscientious of appreciation every day because it causes me to take time to recognize value. I believe appreciation is crucial to global citizenship because a primary purpose of global citizenship is the desire to act for others in our community and around the world. If people do not appreciate their own life and others lives they will not be as inclined to act for the benefit of everyone.
Dedication is one of my personal values because I would not be able to accomplish my goals without it. Furthermore, dedication is important to global citizenship because as we learned from analyzing the Senior Capstone projects, and outlining action plans in class, action requires an abundant amount of time and effort. Consequently, I believe dedication promotes change. If one persists, they will eventually achieve their goals.
Humility is a quality that I greatly value. While people should be confident about their ability, I believe that humility grounds people. Without humility people might become too focused on their own goals and achievements and not recognize their role as a global citizen. Furthermore, humility also allows people to fully see the value of everyone. This characteristic is important in fostering a global citizenship mindset because a global citizen acts for the benefit of everyone.
Passion is a quality that I value because one can achieve the most when they have desire. This is extremely important to the role of an active global citizen because one must be passionate about their cause. Similarly, seeing passion in someone can greatly inspire others to their cause. If people are passionate not only will they want to accomplish their goal, but it will be easier to find others who are passionate and form a united group of activists.
Compassion has always been something I value because it drives my desire to help. However, the compassion I value is not focused on pity, it focuses on concern and trying to understand though we may never actually be able to. Without compassion I believe the world would be very self-focused, and there would not be a global citizen mindset. Consequently, when we have compassion we are more inclined to act for others rather than our own benefits.
As an active citizen, I believe that I deserve basic human rights. Activism is very powerful and involves upsetting the status quo, this entails that there are risks associated with it. While the right to activism is not a basic human right, I believe that it should be. When people are afraid their rights will be taken they suppress their real thoughts, the result is that progress is stalled.
I believe my first responsibility as a global citizen is to strive to understand perspectives and cultures, so I am educated when I take action. I also see it is my responsibility to act when basic human rights are endangered. Finally, I believe it is my responsibility as a global citizen to strive to recognize that everything I do has an impact. While it is difficult to constantly think about our impact, the awareness that we do have an impact facilitates the understanding that we can have an impact. If we are not conscious of our impact then we can pick and choose what we see as positive, if all people did this then we would not achieve much.
While Global Citizenship has primarily educated me about global citizenship. The course has also given me the tools to become an active global citizen. These tools are the learning outcomes curiosity, analyzation, reflection and identification.
From the Global Citizenship course I have gained a deep curiosity. Not only have I gained curiosity but I have learned what topics I should be especially curious about. For example, now I ask about norms in society and how these norms affect people. I used to fully believe that positing on social media was sufficient for change. However, after learning about slacktivism I have reconsidered sharing posts and have tried to think of how I could take action or encourage others to take action by sharing. Additionally, in class one of our assignments was to review past social movements. Successful social movements are rooted in passion and often sacrifice. I believe this is why slaktivism is not efficient in promoting change, sharing posts on social media do not create enough attachment.
After global citizenship, I can analyze situations with more depth since all of our assignments were rooted in examination. However, I believe I learned the most after analyzing the Senior Capstone project: Mapping Bethlehem. I worked with my classmates to analyze the proposal but my main assignment was to develop critiques. This definately increased my analyzation skills because I was analyzing how the seniors thought about the project and how they could have thought about it.
I have greatly enhanced my reflection abilities during Global Citizenship. The most evident part of this has been Writing to Learn. During these assignments, I believe I really reflected on readings and assignments to an extent that I was not only analyzing the material but how the material was interpreted and my own role. This sort of reflection differed from previous reflection because now I was reflecting on not only on classes
The last learning outcome that has surfaced in my time in Global Citizenship is identification. This has been a significant learning outcome because to properly analyze situations we had to first identify the situation. I really learned this skill while completing the Comparative Paper. I focused on healthcare in countries and how a Nationalist vs. a Cosmopolitan would approach solving the problem. However, in order to do this I had to identify what the real causation was of healthcare issues, I concluded that it was economic inequalities.
This course meant so much to my development with a global mindset. I have always felt a deep need to understand the world around me but at times felt limited because I always felt afraid that I would misinterpret, or that I did not know enough. After global citizenship, I feel more empowered to approach problems. This is the main reason that I want to be a part of Global Citizenship Program because I really want to continue to learn about how I can become a better active global citizen. I would give myself an intermediate grade on the global citizenship scale. I have greatly progressed in my understanding of global citizenship, but have not mastered the approach to global citizenship. Similarly, I believe the intermediate grade is a great accomplishment because I feel abundantly more prepared and educated to take action after taking global citizenship.
Global citizenship will and has undoubtedly influenced my personal life. I have chosen to educate those around me with what I have learned, either at dinner of relaxing on the front lawn, because global citizenship relates to so much. Similarly, it will influence my personal life in the future because I really enjoy surrounding myself with people who question norms and want change. Consequently, I will try and surround myself with people who question. However, I will not look for people who only question the same topics, I will try and surround myself with different perspectives so I can continue to learn.
After global citizenship, I will definitively make a conscious decision of who I work for. Remarkably, Global Citizenship has given me direction of what I would like to do with my degree. Before Global Citizenship I felt that I wanted to be a finance major working in New York for a big company, however I realize I won’t be making the impact that I want to help others because I feel that I would be assisting a cycle where the rich become richer. My main goal now is to work on economics on a global scale and develop the microeconomics of countries’ economies to encourage development.
I think my greatest characteristic is my compassion. My compassion constantly drives my desire to know more and help others. I continue to learn so that I can one day help others, as I know that my education is extremely valuable and something I deeply value. Consequently, I believe my greatest ability for social change is my passion for change and my education. Additionally, as an Economics and International Relations major I will have a great depth of knowledge to solve global economic problems. I will combine all of my abilities to influence the economic world. Currently, there is a hindrance to the development of many countries because of established norms in the economic world including institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF). While the IMF provides loans to countries in debt it also requires heavy concessions including the requirement of free trade which makes it difficult for developing countries to protect their infant industries required for development. Subsequently, I would like to devote my passion and knowledge to global economics so that all economies can prosper.