Dear future me,

 

So you’ve finally opened the time capsule – that must mean it’s been five years since I’ve written this letter. Do you remember writing this? 

I’m writing to you because there is a lot happening right now, and I’m sure you’re living a busy and fulfilling life, but I want you to take a second to remember and reflect on this time. I wonder how you’ll feel. Are you reminiscing or relieved, or both? 

Here’s a little about what’s going on as I write this. First of all, I’m about to graduate college, isn’t that crazy? It feels like just yesterday that I graduated high school, but it also feels like so much has happened and changed. I’m guessing that five years from now, that’s how you’ll be feeling about graduating from college too. I hope that you’re doing well, living and thriving. How is your health? I ask because, as I’m sure you remember, I’m graduating in the midst of a global pandemic. There is a lot happening in the world, politically, economically, and culturally. Do you remember the anxiety (both of fear and excitement) you felt about graduating into such a rapidly changing world? I’m sure you figured it out though, we always have.

 

I’m also writing to you because as a soon-to-be college graduate, I’m hoping that you’ve put the skills and qualities I’ve learned to good use. Do you remember what you learned in college and in life in these years? I’ll give you a little refresher – In my opinion, the most important skills and qualities you took away were 1) Critical Global Analysis, 2) Collaboration, 3) Curiosity for Knowledge, and 4) Cultural Humility and Empathy. I’ll expand on each of those. 

 

Critical Global Analysis was a skill that you went into college hoping to learn. Before starting college, you’ve done some travel and learned a little about the world, and you wanted to learn more about why the world was the way it was. You were attracted to the UWB Global Studies major because this was one of its main learning goals. To be critical, according to educator and philosopher Paulo Freire, “encourages individuals to affect change in their world through social critique and political action in order to self-actualize.” Global Analysis entails a detailed examination of the structures and details of the interconnected systems in the world. Together, Critical Global Analysis means examining the economic, political, and cultural processes and structures that link people and places across the globe in order to critique, learn about the self, and promote change. You did this throughout your time in the Global Studies and Community Psychology majors, for example when you wrote an essay critiquing the intervention method executed in the film Born into Brothels in the class BIS 337 Risk and Resilience. In this essay, you looked at the issue of children of sex workers living in the slums of India, and why the western intervention portrayed in the film was unsuccessful. You learned to not just accept the perspective of the western “heroes” in the film and looked at who was really benefiting, and why the intervention method needed to be modified to consider larger societal structures. It made you reflect on your own privilege and what you could be doing in your life to make changes. These are all important things to consider, and Critical Global Analysis is a necessary skill when you want to participate in the world as a global citizen whether you use this type of analysis in a job or not. I hope you are learning to be critical of why the world is the way it is, and not just accepting everything you see/hear in the media or from others. I hope you are doing your research to figure out what types of structures are at play and who is benefiting when looking at issues, and being considerate of how you play a role in those structures. 

 

I hope you’re still utilizing your skills of Collaboration. Collaboration can be defined as the act of working with others in order to create something or reach a shared goal. I think this is something that we’ve been learning throughout our lives, but I hope you took away a new understanding of what it means to collaborate in college. In college, you collaborated with others in projects like the analysis of the Venezuelan Refugee Crisis in BIS 300 Interdisciplinary Inquiry and the creation of a Google Maps on the Nile and Water Scarcity in Sub-Saharan Africa in BISGST 303 History and Globalization. You worked on these projects with people that you just met that were from many different majors. You had to communicate with them about one another’s different ideas and perspectives, and figure out who was interested in what. You also learned to use one another’s strengths and weaknesses to an advantage and learned that with others it’s possible to accomplish so much more than what you can just on your own. You also collaborated with people in your work and volunteer experiences, like when you volunteered at an elementary school to run an after school tutoring and activities club. You divided up some of the work with your supervisor and fellow volunteers so that every child was getting their needs met and no one was overworking themselves. You learned that many times working with others can be equally about you as it is about the entire group and each individual’s needs and wants, and you need to balance everyone’s needs. This is a skill that’s useful in all areas of life, ranging from professional and volunteer experiences to family matters. I hope that you are still continuing to effectively collaborate with others and even further developing the skill. 

 

I hope you still possess the Curiosity for Knowledge that you had in college. Curiosity is the state of active interest and the desire to learn or know. Knowledge is information acquired through experience or education. Together, Curiosity for Knowledge is a strong desire to gain more information through theoretical or practical experience. In college, you learned different ways to collect knowledge to feed your curiosity. For example, you tried ethnographic research and wrote the essay “Policing Public Space,” you interviewed someone from a different background than you to learn about their experiences and you wrote “Dialogue Across Difference,” you conducted statistical research on social trends of US adults, and you wrote many research papers. You learned that there are so many ways to gain information and learn, and all of them can tell different stories or shed light on different perspectives which are all equally significant. You learned that knowledge is power, and the more you know, the more you are aware to make better choices in life. Curiosity and gaining knowledge contribute to the constant improvement of life, whether it be in a more practical way, an emotional way, or a social way. I hope that even if you are out of school, you still possess curiosity and are doing what you can to gain knowledge about things that interest you. I hope that you’re still utilizing the methods you learned in college to gain knowledge and seeking out new ways to do so as well, to form a more holistic view of the world. 

 

Lastly, I also hope that you’ve carried Cultural Humility and Empathy into your life. The National Institutes of Health defines cultural humility as “a lifelong process of self-reflection and self-critique whereby the individual not only learns about another’s culture, but one starts with an examination of her/his own beliefs and cultural identities.” Empathy is the ability to share and understand the feelings of others. Together, possessing Cultural Humility and Empathy means to have the ability to reflect on one’s place in the world and beliefs about others in a process of understanding others. It also entails believing that one is not superior to others and appreciating the diversity of human experience. You practiced this mentality throughout your college years in and out of school, as you learned about the ways that others live. You traveled to lands that felt foreign to you and while learning about others, reflected and allowed the new experiences to challenge your beliefs. You tried to connect with people who live in different circumstances, sometimes those that are seemingly worse than you, and tried to understand what they’ve gone through while being conscious not to diminish their strengths and will. You worked with children in marginalized communities and adults with disabilities and learned to understand their experiences while working to improve them. I hope that you still possess these qualities, not just to use them in a job but to be a decent person in the world. 

I don't know where you are or what your life circumstances look like when you’re reading this. I imagine you possibly working with a nonprofit. Maybe a government job? Teaching children? Maybe you’ve even found love and have a child or two! Either way, I hope that you are still developing everything that I’ve learned up to this point and improving on the skills and qualities I mentioned. I hope that you are contributing to progressive and positive change in the world and fighting to shrink inequality between people’s experiences. Lastly, I hope you’re enjoying being the person that you are, appreciating your material and spiritual abundance, and loving life! 

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Love,

J