1. This fall 2021 semester I am enrolled in 5 classes. One of them being this class, my GUST first year seminar. My other courses are English 110, Intro to Environmental Issues 104, Animals Literature & Culture 204, and Visual Sociology 180.

My GUST seminar is, I would consider, my most vital class. Within this 3 credit course I will be assimilated into the UNE community, learn how to use digital and in-person resources, become familiar with the ways that characterize higher education, and ultimately discover what I want to, and how I want to accomplish in my 4 years.

One of my other courses, English 110, serves a different purpose. Within this 4 credit course I will be conditioned to treat writing as a recursive process, learn to work collaboratively, participate in engaged discussions and peer review, and focus overall on my personal writing development. This is a class designed to prepare students for advanced academic writing, and completes the core English composition goals. Every morning in this class, Professor Brod has my class free-write, often on a given theme. This wakes up our brains and helps us make connections between thoughts, the world, and writing real sentences. I often participate in sharing my free-write ideas.

My second English course, Animals, Literature, and Culture 204, covers one of the core exploration credits for my 4 years here. This is a 3 credit course focused on animal and cultural literary studies. By the end of this course students will learn how to critically analyze, connect literary works to wider intellectual and cultural contexts, and prepare for more advanced studies. The literary studies of this course focuses a lot on origin stories, poems, and how different animal species inhabit literature and to what effect. In this class we connect our reading to our broader experiences. Similar to my other English course, Professor McHugh also has the class engage in a 10 minute free writing period before class begins. Our free-writes normally relate back to the 20-50 pages of challenging material we read independently before class time. We also engage in a lot of group work, where we work with partners to manage our ideas and get feedback from one another.

Visual sociology is the exploration of society from a visual perspective in the form of images, videos, graphics, etc. Within this course students are encouraged to analyze society sociologically, comprehend the disciplinary approach required to analyze visually, and extend their abilities to integrate perspectives using visual mediums. This is a 3 credit course that covers the CAS core curriculum in Explorations. This class is shaped much differently than my others. This class is structured around visuals, not reading and writing. It’s a very discussion based class, and I strongly enjoy it. There is a lot to images that we see, but do not truly see. This has been my favorite class so far this semester.

My 5th class is Intro to Environmental Issues. This class covers the environmental awareness 3 credits required in the first year semester. In this class, students will be made aware of key fundamental issues and the impact, source, and solution of these issues. We also analyze the relationship between humans and our environment. This class has so far been revolved around a lot of reading and class discussion. We read 1-2 chapters every night for homework and come to class ready to open discussions.

2. Exploration courses introduce ways of thinking and ways of knowing as a social science. In this theme, human experience is framed by the assumptions, methods, and terminology of a particular discipline. In this case, my exploration course is Visual Sociology. This class has already opened my eyes, literally, to a world I had not seen before. The visual world. I have never taken a sociology class before, so being in this course is a privilege for me, and I am very excited to learn the discipline.

Included are 4 pictures of my Core handout annotations where I am drawing connections between what I am currently experiencing and what I am reading.

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