What is true — I see now — is that I grew up in that novel: my annotations maturing with me, my understanding of myself, my education, and life itself slowly ripening in its margins. Whenever I wonder, anxiously, about where I will go next in life, I know at least that I have a record, an archive, of where I have already been.

By getting feedback from the more experienced dancers on my teams, I was able to improve and learn how to move more comfortably in my body. Sure, I learned how to dance from being involved with my dance crews, but I also learned time management, determination, and how to apply feedback to better myself in whatever I do.

Being on a team also taught me the value of determination.

Psychiatry seemed like the right fit. Spoiler alert: I didn’t become a psychiatrist.

My main message as I reflect on my time here at UA is that if you stay committed to learning about yourself and approach each challenge and experience with an open mind and growth mindset, you will find that college — and the University of Arizona, specifically — will provide an unforgettable and fulfilling experience. Even though there may be times that will bring challenges, if you transform these experiences into learning opportunities, you cannot go wrong. Enjoy your first year and keep learning!

While I loved my undergraduate major and work experiences, I began to feel similarly to how I had at the beginning of college. I wanted to explore what other opportunities were available and try new job experiences that would help me grow.

At one point, I was working four different part-time jobs at once, but I could not picture myself leaving any of them because each taught me something different about the campus and myself.

it all relates. Whether it is the development of critical consciousness, clarifying your own moral and ethical codes, honing writing and quantitative reasoning skills, or acquiring other forms of knowledge (disciplinary or otherwise), I encourage you to embrace broad personal growth and eclectic intellectual development sooner rather than later! Afford yourself the joy of learning, for the sake of learning.

The relatively small class sizes and dedicated teachers provided an excellent foundational education and I look back on those formative years fondly.

Struggling to overcome mistakes forces us to critically appraise our work, strengthens our understanding of the problem, and helps us recognize our faulty thinking. By correcting mistake, we learn to accept that they are things we make, not who we are! With this acceptance comes greater freedom to take risks we might not have previously taken.

While undergraduates are not expected to complete dissertations, you will still be asked to choose topics for papers and projects.

By remaining curious, trying new things, and being willing to risk failure (or the feeling of embarrassment that can mimic failure), you will surprise yourself with how much you can learn and grow.

I was afraid and I was also a terrible singer, but I knew that I wanted to get a good grade in the course because the achiever in me didn’t want my last Gen Ed grade to tarnish my overall GPA.

My life has come full circle and it was fate — beginning with the name given to me — that has led me to become the “land in between” as I navigate such experiences, not only for myself, but for others just like me.

The cultural things we share give us a sense of belonging, and help us recognize and navigate differences between ourselves and others. Even cultural things shared by people worldwide are filtered through local intersections of place, identity and belief.

My recommendation is to forge a path when you need to and “go with the flow” when you can; to honor your experiences in and out of the classroom, those planned and those unexpected.

Every single one of us comes from different circumstances and while not everything we design is going to be perfect for each of us, we can create responsive services to help make things easier. We can craft policies that make people feel welcomed and valued. We can make libraries where everyone is invited to be part of a community, to share their knowledge, and create new things.

As many a story goes, when my parents discovered they were pregnant with me, my father got to stay and finish college and my mother dropped out at 19. She did not return to finish her bachelor’s degree until 12 years later, as my father was finally realizing his dream to be a commercial pilot.

I am a librarian at UA and I run a makerspace called CATalyst Studios. CATalyst is a place in the Main Library with 3D printers, laser cutters, sewing machines, and other tools for anyone to use.

It is for this reason that universities are now incorporating all four approaches: Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion – or, J.E.D.I. Returning to the varieties of music I discussed at the beginning of this narrative, consider this chapter my J.E.D.I. mixtape[3] where one track may make your head bob more than others, but they function as a collective album. Therefore, and sorry for mixing metaphors, our collective challenge is to develop from Padawan[4] to J.E.D.I. Wildcats!

Diversity and inclusion efforts provide important resources and support for a variety of students on college campuses

to diversify college campuses, higher education sought to bring students from different backgrounds together into one space to interact with and listen to one another; the goal was for everyone to learn from the different cultural orientations that each student brought to the table and to promote racial harmony (Warikoo).

Now, many of you Wildcats probably either had to Wikipedia my musical references or you know them through the “classic” radio stations.

This meant that I could be sitting on a street corner hearing competing sound systems blaring songs like “Friends in Low Places” and “Ain’t Nothin’ but a G Thang,” all while another classmate sat on the curb playing Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy.” McMinnville certainly was a unique place to be in the early- to mid-90s.

Students need to demonstrate their knowledge through real-world application, which in my opinion goes well beyond the data gathered in D2L.

This data helps me determine where students are spending their time, how they are doing on assessments, and how engaged they are with each other in discussions. I use this data to improve the design of the course.

We cannot assume you learned the content when you watched a video; we must actually engage you in some way (e.g. a quiz) to assess your comprehension of the content

I am teaching a new course called Introduction to Adobe Creative Cloud where we explore Adobe applications as a tool for all disciplines to communicate.

While learning math, have you ever wondered, “will I ever use this”? This question marked a pivotal turning point for me as an undergraduate college student.

Words are power; words are life; words are connection. I encourage you to find your own voice — your own way with words — and to use that skill to make your own impactful way in the world.

I have become passionate about supporting student success and persistence at the institutional level by changing how we teach.

. And the most meaningful writing happens when we have a personal connection, a choice in what we write, and an awareness that what we write connects to real-world problems.

On the contrary, when writing about rBGH from the point of view of small dairy farmers, I became engrossed in the social issue. I didn’t write for a grade. I was motivated to advocate.

I entered the university assuming writing would be rote. In high school, writing had mostly been a transaction.

I share this because I hope you, too, leave your Gen Ed courses with more confidence in your abilities to research difficult topics, apply worldviews and perspectives other than your own, and voice your ideas on dynamic, real-world issues that impact your future.

The purpose of the Gen Ed course attributes — Writing, Quantitative Reasoning, Diversity & Equity, and World Cultures & Societies — is to provide a framework for the perspectives you explore in your Gen Ed courses.

Being a social scientist means living life continuously intrigued and surprised by the widely diverse answers humans give to the most important questions.

Although I never wrote a novel, I became interested in studying how fantasy and imagination are an important part of how people cope and concoct strategies to push through the pain of inequality and historical trauma.

Having some competency and knowledge in the natural sciences has been indispensable for me every single time I enter the classroom, and the discussions always make me eager to learn more because they show me what I don’t know yet.

Science is done in many different ways by all types of people.

But I am very grateful that I have developed an inner Kirk, too — albeit quieter than my inner Spock — who reminds me that the needs of the few, or even the one, can be just as important.

I could not list the different frameworks we used in my ethics course, but I’ve never forgotten the practice of trying to understand the other side of an argument.

Employers appreciate it when employees can think critically and imaginatively about problems, and are creative under constraint, adaptable in unfamiliar contexts, savvy about collaboration, able to communicate in two or more languages, and practiced at expressing their ideas in multiple ways.

When Dr. Lauretta looks to asteroids to discover the cosmochemical origins of Earth, he is asking one of the most fundamental (and extraordinarily difficult) of all humanities questions: How did we get here?

ey strive to become comfortable dancing with complex and unavoidable life experiences such as ambiguity, risk, love, friendship, and death.

Humanists are inherently connectional, always striving to see how the values and meanings of human life link up with the values and meanings ascribed to other peoples and cultures, plants and animals, the planet, and the space beyond our atmosphere.

As an artist and graphic designer, I enjoy the connections and collaborations both fields offer. As a designer, I enjoy helping people’s voices be heard.

Drawing is a tool of communication and often the first step to becoming a visual artist — at least it was for me. Drawing not only manifests representational imagery but explores expression through mark-making, color, and composition. Visual art can evoke emotions, communicate ideas, and elevate the human experience. Art brings what did not exist before into being.

This experience of art making stories more meaningful fueled my love for drawing and its ability to help me make sense of the world.

Our perspectives — we can hold several at once — are formed through our life experiences, culture, family, friends, and the society in which we live.

Taking stock of our own and others’ perspectives is an ongoing process because as we change — as we meet new people and learn new things — our perspectives change; these changes need to be accounted for as we mature and gain familiarity with new perspectives.

The word “perspective” has two roots, each trickier than you might realize. Take the second half of the word: “-spective.” It comes from the Latin word specere, which is often translated as “to see.”

In that computer science course, I was given problems to solve that necessitated learning how to communicate with a machine in order to get that machine to do what I needed it to do.

These are stories that sometimes don’t get shared if we believe no one wants to listen. Reflection allows us to value what sometimes is hidden in learning.

. By sharing my experience I was inviting people in to share their own stories. I was making space to allow others to share their reflections and celebrate everyone’s stories.

Some of my reflections were on sticky notes, doodles in my planner, letters in a journal, and some were more tailored to specific topics and audiences.

It was terrifying — I was way behind in math and science — but I did it anyway. For the first time in my life, I found myself pulled toward something completely out of my comfort zone, which seemed like a great place to discover who I could be.

It was the perfect time for something unexpected to find its way into my life, as I was no longer confident in my chosen path. A loss like that can cause us to reevaluate where we are and where we are going. For me, I wasn’t sure anymore, and so I was ripe for something to take hold and give me a new purpose.

If only I had known what unstoppable forces had been at work in those places, if only someone had told me that it had taken five million years of flowing water to eat away at the layers exposed in the Grand Canyon, layers that recorded over one billion years of Earth’s history, maybe I would have wondered how it was possible that water — something I found soothing and associated with comfort — could rip into solid rock and leave behind a hole that is eighteen miles wide and over a mile deep.

Express your wonder enough and you’ll sometimes inadvertently tap into your real imagination; your wonder will transmogrify into genuine curiosity. The distance between, for example, “It’s a wonder that anyone reads this stuff anymore” and “I’m curious about why this antique text still speaks to people today” can be surprisingly short.

Actually, “curiosity” has its roots in the Latin word curare, which means “to care for.” When we ask people questions — when we express curiosity — we send the message that we care: “I’m interested in what you’re saying. I’m interested in who you are and how you think.”

I still have the goal of completing that 100-miler; but the bigger goal I have of being a healthy runner for years to come shapes how I pursue that 100-mile race.

Tapping into and reflecting upon your wonder and curiosity can dramatically shape the way you consider and work toward your future — the way that you write the answer to the question, “Where are you going?”

It was not to work as a trainer or a running coach, mind you; rather, it was to continue the learning that would support my interests.

Because of the importance of analytical thinking, I require all students to participate in a debate, oftentimes placing them on the side that they disagree with. The goal is not to compel students to change their beliefs and ideas, but rather to encourage them to further develop their critical thinking and communication skills.

With the rise in polarization and the growth of incivility in public discourse, with “brother / sister / neighbor / friend turning on their brother / sister / neighbor / friend,” we now live in an era of “outrage culture” where emotions and fear run high and where individuals are personally attacked for their views rather than being able to debate their ideas.

There are services on campus like tutors from the Think Tank, Counseling and Psych Services, Student Assistance for students in crisis, Disability Resource Center accommodations, and an array of cultural centers that provide support and community to their students.

These experiences may inspire you to create change in your local communities, take risks in your career, and share your wisdom with your friends, family, and future generations.

What excites me about our Gen Ed program is that it is designed for you to learn and practice skills such as communicating effectively, thinking critically about complex problems, and fostering teamwork. These are essential skills for all of us as we work and live in communities

. I joined a University-run Facebook group for Arizona Online and Near You Network students. There, I learned that online students can join clubs and other student organizations — just as on-campus students do.

. By fall I was laid off and subsequently lost my tuition funding. Knowing I wanted to continue my education, I secured a job as a live-in nanny to support myself and my school costs. Since I felt disconnected from my online university, I decided to transfer to the University of Arizona’s Arizona Online program.

Furthermore, we must respectfully and justly acknowledge Indigenous people who established Chuk-son and upon whose lands our land-grant mission was enacted in an entangled past.

As a teenager, I worked in my father’s kitchen, a small tortilla and tamal factory in the downtown Presidio neighborhood of Tucson. I chopped chiles, onions, and tomatoes. I burned myself a dozen times on steaming pots of tamales, folded hundreds of sobaquera tortillas into birria burritos, and loaded a thousand paper bags with quesadillas and tacos. Leaving the kitchen each workday, I could never truly escape my father’s food; I carried the smell of garlic, beans, or red chile on my clothes and in my hair, wherever I went.

My anthropology professor with the wild beard got us to journal, an exercise that brought me to some important conclusions about my own well-being and learning. I don’t remember all the courses’ content, but I remember how they made me feel confident in my own writing style and that my creative interpretations of assignments were not only valued, but encouraged. While it was only one semester, it was my experience in general education that shaped who I have become as an educator, a person, and a member of the Wildcat community.