One of my short-term personal goals this semester/ year is to meet more new people on campus. This doesn’t mean ‘make friends’ with everyone on campus, but instead get to know the names of more of my peers and get to know them, which could in turn lead to friendship. I think this is a very important goal because especially for me last year, going to a smaller school during the pandemic; it was extremely difficult to meet a lot of people (I was mainly restricted by the schools population). A related passage from “Why do we need the Liberal Arts” in Scheuers’ article states “The overall goal is to foster vibrant and prosperous communities with broad and deep participation , in public conversations marked by fairness, inclusion, and (where critical thinking comes in) intellectual rigor”. This small quote is actually one of the reasons I picked UNE to transfer to. I enjoy small inclusive communities, but still want there to be a more diverse population than my old school, which I feel like UNE stands for in some ways.
One of my short term goals that could be considered long term is to learn how to utilize academic knowledge that I learn at UNE in the “real world” after college. I feel that in High School this isn’t as focused on, usually leading to students asking questions like “Well how can I use this math equation in my life after school?” and most of the time teachers can’t answer them. I feel that now we are following a looser curriculum and taking classes that we choose, this is much more important not just from a professional standpoint, but from one for the sake of learning itself, as well. The quote I chose is from the UNE Core Handbook under section III, “Created to provide a foundation in the liberal arts, the core reflects the values of the college and is designed to prepare students for living informed, thoughtful, and active lives in a complex and changing society”. This quote reassures me that we will be learning how to apply out academics learned at UNE, to the outside world and beyond.
