Grace Hartley

Butenhoff
6/7/16
Final Reflection Essay
When I first entered college, I had a similar perception of people that I had had in
high school. I had grown up in a small town, and often, the kids had very comparable
experiences to mine. The class diversity wasn't exceptional because most of the richer
students went to a private school nearby, and the impoverished students often went to an
alternative high school. This meant I was surrounded by mostly white and Hispanic
young adults who were lower to upper middle class and came from Oregon if not the
small town itself. Once I entered college, I was overwhelmed by the cultural diversity the people around me had had very different lives from my traditional suburban
upbringing, and had very different views as a result. It's still difficult to try and fathom
the variety of backgrounds and stories that surround me, but the studies, stories, and
statistics we read in class this year helped me at least begin to understand the level of
diversity in the human experience, the morals that govern us (or don't), how to look at all
of it, and the importance behind it - my world view was so much more ethnocentric, and
moving to the city enriched it by by exposing me to the lives and views of others.
Once I learned more about the human experience, I inevitably became more
aware of the struggles and needs that come along with it. As I continue to learn about it, I
feel more and more that my privilege obligates me to help others; because I am capable
of improving the lives of others, I should. I live in a place that not only allows me access

to food, shelter, education and free time, but equality. Portland may not be a utopia of
social justice, but it's made progress and done work not many other places have - bigotry,
racism, and sexism are persecuted and actively fought on campus and seen as taboo
throughout the city. We have created a culture that gets us closer to equality than many
other places are, and the need for improvements here highlights the need for
improvements in other places, where women, minorities, or low income classes aren't
offered opportunities for happiness or freedom they should be as people. Being in this
environment has really influenced how I understand others: their needs, their beliefs, their
existence. I've learned there really are many different ways of knowing, and they often
contradict each other - take science and religion. We discussed this thoroughly in my final
term, and wrote and analysis on the topic. Science and religion are both valid, powerful
ways of understanding our universe, but they don't always agree, or even coincide, and
that's not objectively a bad thing. Unfortunately, some people are prone to judge other
cultures because they are different, like a biologist might a priest. We conducted a study
to see how extensive this was. Though our study was inconclusive, I've learned through
different texts that people have incredible capacity for both judgement and acceptance.
As I was learning about diversity, I was also learning about morality. One of the
first assignments of the year was a reading in which we were forced to question our basic
understanding of morality. Before, I felt being moral meant 'doing the right thing'.
However, a major theme of university studies is that right and wrong are subjective. We
learned, first term especially, that not only is morality hard to universally define, but that
the importance of it's application is also questionable. Of course, most people are forced
by powerful social conventions to concede the importance of morality, but is the internal

value of 'doing right' by one and other? The pleasure it brings? What about the pleasure
brought by 'immoral' behavior? These questions become even more difficult to answer
when on realizes morality is completely subject to cultural influence. In the first term,
Bettridge had us write a provocative paper (used in my examples section), in which we
asked many questions like this. Almost as important as the answers I came up with for
myself was the confidence I developed in asking these questions - I did not feel afraid
that people would judge me as immoral (or that it would even matter) if I asked
questions. It was and is important to always ask questions. This scientific mode of
thinking - of always crosschecking, looking for evidence, thinking critically, was very
applicable the final term, and we once again revisited morality in our Worldview unit because how do you talk about worldview without making implications about morality? I
have been led to a more solidified view of morality as contextual social laws throughout
this year because of the work we've done, which is very different from my pre-college
view.
Because much of what we covered was complex, we were required to think
critically and analytically from the beginning. Identity development, society and the
individual, variety of culture and the concept of 'different' versus 'better' really challenged
past modes of thinking, and forced me consider new perceptions of the world in a way
that surprised me; I speak constantly about how knowledge is fatal to ignorance and
bigotry, but when I see how learning has affected me personally, I'm still amazed.
Without Professor Bettridge, Flynn, or Butenhoff's encouragement and prompting, I
think I would have gotten far less from the materials - they forced us to push ourselves
and question our previous ideas in new ways. It was the discussion, the presentation of

new ideas, and the new ways of seeing those ideas that really helped me recognize the
value of stepping outside my usual way of thinking and trying to understand things on a
deeper level. Our discussion posts from the first two terms and our critical analysis for
the final term were very important in this inquisitive development. I chose a very difficult
discussion post from the first term and the midterm for second term, which had a very
similar structure to our usual discussion posts, which I have included in my examples.
One of the most pleasant and surprising things about Freshman year has been the
interconnections of ideas between classes. First term, I took a linguistics course, and
second term I took a critical thinking/philosophy/informal logic course, and this term I
took a roman history class and each course stressed the importance of communication that the presentation of ideas is almost as important as the idea itself. These lessons have
allowed me to more effectively understand the context I'm delivering an idea in, consider
what will present the idea clearest and with the least distractions to the audience, then
have more confidence to actually share my thoughts. For example, speaking in a class full
of freshman is different than speaking in a class of mixed grades. Freshman will be able
to relate to certain concepts of adjustment and inexperience, and they are more afraid to
speak themselves while, in general, older students have 'been there, done that' and are
more likely to share certain experiences of academic struggle with one and other that I
haven't had yet. Knowing these things affects how I speak in my FRINQ versus my other
classes. We recently held debates in class; 'Does science reduce the possibility of ____?'
We discussed free will, god, teleology, and a different debate involving the harmfulness
of pseudoscience for society. After an admittedly quiet year, with very little constructive
debate on the part of the students, a structured debate was an incredible opportunity to

communicate ideas with our peers. Though not every idea was genuine to the speaker (we
didn't all pick our personally relevant side and the topic we were most interested in), the
ideas were inevitably colored by their legitimate thoughts and ideas. I, for example,
argued that the possibility of free will was not reduced by science, though I personally
doubt it's existence. However, my ideas and thoughts were influenced by what I
researched and I shared this with the class, and it was apparently convincing. Finally,
final papers often taught me that if you let ideas speak for themselves and talk to your
teacher, you will communicate an infinitely better thesis.
These different aspects and learning goals of the university studies program gave
me a very different, more accepting view of the world. The new ways I have learned of
and discussed critical inquiry, analysis, the human experience, diversity, communication,
and morality taught me that the world is not as black and white and simply organized as
we are prone to think. Each person is equally complex, created through constant social,
biological, and psychological development. We are social creatures that perpetuate this
incredible intricacy through our interactions as masses and crowds, and our interactions
as individuals. Though I'll never be able to truly fathom the complexity of humanity, I
have at least begun to understand what it is to know.

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