PERSONAL GOAL
One personal goal I would like to work on this current year in my amount of social interaction with others. I came to UNE in the height of Covid-19 and was deprived of much of my freshman year experience. This had a negative effect on the peers I met, friendships I formed, and conversing with others unlike myself. I think studying the liberal arts will aid my social skills and encourage me to meet more peers unlike myself. In Scheuer’s reading he states that liberal arts provides “A third kind of citizenship (and the particular focus of the humanities) is cultural citizenship, through participation in the various conversations that constitute a culture” (Scheuer 3). One of the main goals of studying the liberal arts is gaining the knowledge of multiple cultures. This then allows students, like myself, to participate in conversations with others apart of cultures separate from their own. I find this to be a crucial life skill, but also as something to improve my college experience.
ACADEMIC GOAL
My biggest academic goal for the year would be to maintain the Dean’s list required grades. To some people, studying the liberal arts isn’t studying “actual” subjects like a Biology student would study STEM. In Ungar’s article about the misperception of the liberal arts, it says, “One should not, in this day and age, study only the arts. The STEM fields–science, technology, engineering, and mathematics– are where the action is. The liberal arts encompass the broadest possible range of disciplines in the natural sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences” (Ungar 2). In my opinion, studying the liberal arts is just as hard, if not harder, than studying the basic STEM classes. We have learned the components of STEM subjects for a majority of our life, college is just building on those basic concepts. To learn the liberal arts is to take in multiple other cultures, global issues, and the weight of societal topics. This is far harder than it is to studying a Physics equations. Information and knowledge that is learned through the liberal arts is meant for the application of real life. Therefore, to study the liberal arts is much more difficult than imagined.
