My Mom likes to tell me I'm the most opinionated person she's ever met. You can thank the University of Saskatchewan for that. The first time I entered those campus gates as a fresh faced 18 year old I had a lot to learn in terms of life experience. I still do actually, but back then I pretty much just believed whatever anyone told me. I entered those gates thinking I would come out a veterinarian and instead came out an engineer. I'm still not entirely sure how that happened, but I'm glad it did. And in those 5 years of higher education I learned what it meant to form my own opinion. To question and ponder, gather evidence and facts and decide what I thought about something. I learned how to have healthy dialogue with someone who held an entirely different opinion than I did. It was within those walls that I became the deep thinker I am today.
I think the journey was one of many small steps, but one that sticks out in my mind was a particular assignment I had in a philosophy class I took on ethics and technology. We had to write. Apparently someone didn't inform my professor that engineering students only know how to do math and physics. In any case we were asked to write a paper and defend whether or not we thought it was ethical to mass produce headless humans for the purpose of organ harvesting. . . I remember reading that assignment and thinking what the heck, I don't even know what to think about this. And as if he read my mind my Professor stood up there at the front and told us that even if we didn't know what to think, we had to pick a side and defend it. Because the whole thing sounded a little over the top to me I decided to defend the stance that it was not ethical to mass produce headless humans. I did mediocre on that paper, probably because I was an engineering student and I couldn't write nearly as well as the English majors in my class, but I also got a comment that I was trying to defend a stance that was nearly impossible to defend since "there is no empirical evidence of the existence of a soul, and in order to prove this practice was unethical, a soul must exist." Now that one little comment could open a can of worms that could get us debating in a whole other direction, but that is not my intent here. My intent is that for one of the first times in my life, I was forced to form an opinion on something I didn't even really want to have an opinion on. We had discussions on many topics in that class from things that were as over the top as headless humans, to the creation of an Ebola vaccine, something that none of us knew would be grabbing headlines worldwide a few years down the road. I remember the haunting moment in that lecture hall when we were discussing the effects of war, and one girl raised her hand and said "I would like to give my thoughts on this because I survived the Rwandan Genocide." In each and every discussion I was pleasantly surprised to see classmates with opinions on complete opposite ends of the spectrum respecting each other and having lively but still kindhearted discussions on something they disagreed on. Having my eyes opened to such possibilities prepared me well for traveling to different parts of the world and realizing that different is not wrong.
I am thankful I was pushed and prodded into forming my own thoughts and ideas on things. By asking me to form my own opinion, the vast majority of my professors communicated to me that what I thought mattered and was valued. I have seen children in various parts of the world who have been told they don't matter, and the result is children who develop into adults who don't believe they have anything to offer and so never speak their mind or voice their ideas, even if those ideas are really really great. I hope that I can encourage the children I work with both here and abroad that they matter enough to have their own voice. To lead by example that asserting one's opinion with arrogance and attitude alienates, but contributing ideas and opinions with grace and respect collectively launches new discoveries and inventions, opens minds wide to ideas that are new and exciting, and makes our world a better place.
I think the journey was one of many small steps, but one that sticks out in my mind was a particular assignment I had in a philosophy class I took on ethics and technology. We had to write. Apparently someone didn't inform my professor that engineering students only know how to do math and physics. In any case we were asked to write a paper and defend whether or not we thought it was ethical to mass produce headless humans for the purpose of organ harvesting. . . I remember reading that assignment and thinking what the heck, I don't even know what to think about this. And as if he read my mind my Professor stood up there at the front and told us that even if we didn't know what to think, we had to pick a side and defend it. Because the whole thing sounded a little over the top to me I decided to defend the stance that it was not ethical to mass produce headless humans. I did mediocre on that paper, probably because I was an engineering student and I couldn't write nearly as well as the English majors in my class, but I also got a comment that I was trying to defend a stance that was nearly impossible to defend since "there is no empirical evidence of the existence of a soul, and in order to prove this practice was unethical, a soul must exist." Now that one little comment could open a can of worms that could get us debating in a whole other direction, but that is not my intent here. My intent is that for one of the first times in my life, I was forced to form an opinion on something I didn't even really want to have an opinion on. We had discussions on many topics in that class from things that were as over the top as headless humans, to the creation of an Ebola vaccine, something that none of us knew would be grabbing headlines worldwide a few years down the road. I remember the haunting moment in that lecture hall when we were discussing the effects of war, and one girl raised her hand and said "I would like to give my thoughts on this because I survived the Rwandan Genocide." In each and every discussion I was pleasantly surprised to see classmates with opinions on complete opposite ends of the spectrum respecting each other and having lively but still kindhearted discussions on something they disagreed on. Having my eyes opened to such possibilities prepared me well for traveling to different parts of the world and realizing that different is not wrong.
I am thankful I was pushed and prodded into forming my own thoughts and ideas on things. By asking me to form my own opinion, the vast majority of my professors communicated to me that what I thought mattered and was valued. I have seen children in various parts of the world who have been told they don't matter, and the result is children who develop into adults who don't believe they have anything to offer and so never speak their mind or voice their ideas, even if those ideas are really really great. I hope that I can encourage the children I work with both here and abroad that they matter enough to have their own voice. To lead by example that asserting one's opinion with arrogance and attitude alienates, but contributing ideas and opinions with grace and respect collectively launches new discoveries and inventions, opens minds wide to ideas that are new and exciting, and makes our world a better place.
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